All too often we come across customers who haven’t been given the full picture about accessibility and achieving legal compliance from their established digital agency or CMS provider. This is not because vendors or agencies are deliberately trying to mislead their customers; it’s more often to do with what is not said about accessibility. Some simply do not tell you what you need to do to  achieve and then maintain compliance with web accessibility guidelines.

Is accessibility a priority or a footnote in your digital project?

Because accessibility is probably not a major concern of the client it is not really focused on by the agency. Instead it is relegated and deprioritised as an item on a product checklist or a tick on a project plan; then once the box is ticked it means that accessibility and related compliance is effectively forgotten. Unfortunately, that’s a recipe for a site that will rapidly become non-compliant with the WCAG 2.1 guidelines.

At the base of this is a misunderstanding that accessibility is purely a platform or technology issue rather than a content issue. It’s a similar misconception we see when people think that good search  or GDPR is purely about a platform. Yes, your coding and your templates do impact accessibility, but so does your content. Therefore, unless your content continues to be tested and assessed, ongoing accessibility compliance is not guaranteed.

Four common misunderstandings

Here are four things that we often see which people misunderstand about their CMS or their digital project.

1. My CMS and therefore my website is accessible, right out of the box

Your CMS and the related administration interfaces may be accessible. The standard out-of-the-box templates that are featured in your CMS may be accessible, and there may be features that support accessibility. But none of these guarantee that the front-end coding on your website and the related content are going to comply with the WCAG 2.1 guidelines.

2. My website is AA compliant at launch

Digital projects such as new websites can be intense and can involve over-runs on budget and resources. Understandably, when a digital agency delivers you a new website, they are often under commercial pressure to implement it quickly. Often the AA level of compliance against the 2.1 WCAG guidelines is also a required condition of the final site. Indeed, this may well be true at the point that the agency hands over the site to you. However, it does not guarantee that it is true at the moment you launch.

If the agency just handed the site over to you with perhaps some designed templates, CSS and maybe some back-end development and you have yet to complete the content, it does not mean that your site is guaranteed to be AA compliant at launch. If you have altered the content or iterated it, again the site may not be fully accessible. Only a review or automated testing of the website content can demonstrate compliance. It may also be worth double checking how your agency guaranteed 2.1 compliance at the point they exited the project; did they use any kind of automated testing, for example?

3. Our CMS will identify issues with accessibility

Many CMS will have in-built reporting and checks that helps you manage your content; some of these will be very useful, others less so. Some CMSs will be able to spot accessibility issues with content – perhaps such as alt text that is missing – but it is important to understand the limitations of what your CMS can do.  When it comes to accessibility compliance, we have yet to see a CMS that has capabilities around the automated assessment of pages to truly identify all you need to do to achieve a fully accessible website.

The WCAG 2.1 rules are extensive and detailed, and a CMS is not really designed to fully test for accessibility. Realistically, only an automated solution that focuses more on the specific issues and granularity inherent in the 2.1 guidelines can find all the accessibility issues that need fixing.

4. Our experts have verified everything is great

Many organisations choose to engage full service digital agencies for the convenience they offer and the access to a range of different digital experts. We’ve worked with some excellent agencies with some truly fantastic staff, but it’s not unknown for some to exaggerate the levels of expertise they have in more specialised areas. One of these areas can be web accessibility.  Of course, we’re not saying this happens with all agencies, but it always worth checking the level of experience of your provider, particularly at the RFP stage.

Make sure you get the full picture

Web accessibility is an area growing in importance and it’s imperative to check that you have the full picture. We believe your digital team, your CMS, your agency and the automation of a platform like Sitemorse are part of a valuable ecosystem that will help you to get the very best out of your website and achieve a fully accessible, compliant site.