Developer Corner - What are Accessibility Failure techniques and Other techniques

07 Dec 2020 | Developer Corner

Helen Grimbly
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This week, Support Lead, Helen Grimbly will be outlining what is meant by Failure techniques and Other techniques as listed on Sitemorse Accessibility pages.

Failure techniques and other techniques are defined by WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines). Failure techniques are 'ways to fail' - if you match the rules of any of these techniques you have failed the associated success criteria. Other techniques are 'ways to succeed' - you have succeeded if you match any of these rules.

Sitemorse does not list any technique as a fail if you have succeeded via another technique. Therefore you should consider all failures listed as indicating there is something on your site that you need to fix.

Example - note this has been simplified for this purpose of this explanation:

Success criterion: 

  • 2.4.4: The purpose of each link can be determined from the link text

Associated Techniques (simplified for clarity): 

  • F89: Link must contain text content or image 'alt' text (failure technique) 
  • H30: Providing link text that describes the purpose of a link (other technique) 
  • ARIA8: Using aria-label for link purpose (other technique)

When Sitemorse assesses this, we check F89 - if you match this technique (that is, you have matched a way to fail), you have failed this success criterion. No other checks are necessary. You will have a fail in the 'Failure techniques' column.

Otherwise, if you have match technique H30 or technique ARIA8 (that is, you have matched at least one way to succeed), you have succeeded at the success criterion. Failing either H30 or ARIA8 alone does not matter, it is only failing both that indicates failure of the success criterion. So if you didn't provide link text and you didn't use aria-label, then you would have two fails in the 'Other techniques' column. Succeeding at either technique would mean no fails would be listed.

So the main purpose is to advise whether the success criterion has been met. If a Report shows numbers in either fail column, this means we think there is definitely something you need to fix.

In instances where we are not sure whether the success criterion has been met, this will not show up as a Fail - it may show up as a Check however.