How to Conduct a Website Accessibility Audit?
No matter what products or services you provide, they should be available to all categories of users. Nowadays most purchases are made online, so it is especially important to do a website accessibility audit. It will allow you to evaluate the accessibility of the digital products and services of your organization.
Once you make a web accessibility audit, check and fix all issues of your website, your digital resource will become even more user-friendly. And this will make the target audience more loyal, positively affect the reputation of the brand, and contribute to the growth of sales.
Read in our manual how to make an accessibility audit for a website and how to improve the user experience of all your potential customers.
What is an accessibility audit
An accessibility audit is a professional evaluation of how well your website, mobile app, and other digital resources meet WCAG technical standards.
WCAG stands for the “Web Content Accessibility Guidelines”, which contains many recommendations and rules aimed at making content accessible for a wide range of users. Including not only people with visual impairments, but also those with hearing impairments, physical disabilities, cognitive disabilities, and others.
WCAG has several levels of compliance. We recommend focusing on the documents collected in the second issue of this guideline – WCAG 2.0.
In short, your content should be: understandable, robust, good perceivable, and operable.
By fitting the site to the required standards of WCAG audit, your target audience will be able to understand, navigate and interact with your web resource without any barriers.
In addition, your online store must meet the requirements of ADA and AODA.
- ADA or the Americans with Disabilities Act protects people from being discriminated against on the basis of disability. According to this law, all electronic and information technologies (which include websites and mobile applications) must be accessible to all web users.
- AODA – the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, that requires your web resources to meet a specific set of standards.
How to audit a website for accessibility
Website accessibility check should test multiple pages of your resource and be conducted using a combination of:
- Automated tools;
- Special plugins;
- Assistive technologies, such as screen readers;
- Various devices (desktops, laptops, tablets, and smartphones);
- The most common browsers.
How do I check my WCAG compliance?
This work should be entrusted to a web accessibility consultant.
It includes:
- Test all pages manually using access technologies for compliance with WCAG recommendations.
- Run test of reading programs with the screen using NVDA and JAWS on desktop, as well as with help of VoiceOver and TalkBack on mobile devices.
- Test the keyboard operation.
- Adjust the color contrast.
- Monitor work in several different browsers and on different gadgets.
- Check whether the screen magnifier works correctly. To do this, you need to use SuperNova and browser zoom.
- Make sure that the text is properly converted into a speech by Dragon Naturally Speaking.
Now you know the answer to the question, how do I audit a website for accessibility according to the requirements of WCAG. Let’s see what needs to be done to make your website comply with other accessibility laws.
How to audit website for ADA/AODA accessibility
When you check your online store for ADA compliance, you should take as a basis WCAG 2.0 recommendations.
How to do an ADA accessibility audit?
This work is also best entrusted to an experienced specialist who will make your web resource easily perceived, working, reliable and understandable.
WCAG has compiled all these principles into a simple list of levels of compliance.
- Level A: pages that are comfortable to work only for some users;
- Level AA: Web resources accessible to almost all people.
- Level AAA: a website accessible to all users without exception.
Naturally, Level A is the easiest to achieve. Reaching AA and AAA will be more complicated, but it is something you should strive for.
Website accessibility audit cost
Website accessibility audit price depends on the size of the project, the number of pages to analyze, consulting, VPAT, and follow-up audit.
To get an accurate quote for your project it is better to contact a web accessibility company.
As a rule, the cost of a project starts from a few thousand dollars.
How often should a website do an accessibility audit
Companies usually decide for themselves how often to perform accessibility testing (depending on the content update on the site). Most websites undergo basic accessibility audits every 3-6 or 12 months.
These “check-up” tests help you to verify ongoing conformance with the WCAG requirements and highlight potential areas for improvement.
Website accessibility audit vendor
Don’t you know who to trust with this kind of work?
Contact Zwebra – a reliable web accessibility company that has extensive experience in this field and all important tools that allow you to make your online store or mobile application compliant with the requirements of WCAG, ADA, and AODA.
The company knows all the current requirements of these laws and has an excellent portfolio of sites updated to levels A and AA.
They write code with software, ensure accessibility for people with disabilities, and test sites using effective technology.
Zwebra is the best solution for businesses that need help with redesigning their website to ensure accessibility or for companies that plan to conduct a regular accessibility audit.
You can be sure: we will indicate all the strengths and weaknesses of your project and will take all the necessary steps to improve it, so that very soon your site will attract more customers and take a higher position in the search results.
Although, as you know website owners are seriously thinking about ADA WCAG compliance, to make it accessible to people with physical disabilities, especially individuals with blur vision. But to perform the entire checkup one should always need experts help, here we would like to recommend “Xcompliant” plug-in which is suitable for wordpress websites.