How to deliver on accessibility obligations and aspirations

05 Feb 2018

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Accessibility

When asked off the record whether their website is truly accessible, many digital managers will reply that they really want it to be but there needs to be more work done. Alternatively, they might say that they’re not sure, but they (strongly) suspect not.

Our wide-ranging experience of automated accessibility testing confirms this. The vast majority of websites do not meet the WCAG 2.0 accessibility standards and hence have the potential to run into issues.

Accessibility is key

Website accessibility is important. It needs to be taken seriously for three main reasons:

  1. Legal and regulatory: Depending on the jurisdiction you are based in and the sector you work in it’s very likely that there will be legal or regulatory requirement to be compliant with accessibility guidelines.
  2. Moral: Your website should be equally accessible to everybody. It’s the right thing to do!
  3. Commercial: Those groups who benefit from a better user experience thanks to accessibility measures are likely to be a significant section of your market, with huge spending power. Why wouldn’t you want to reach out to them?

Why do so many websites fail accessibility testing?

There are multiple reasons why websites fail accessibility testing and digital teams fail to deliver on both their obligations and aspirations. This can include everything from a lack of awareness of the issue to it being a low priority compared to other website improvements.

Sometimes there can even be a digital team “mindset” that makes it feel that achieving compliance is too difficult and hence it is removed from the normal flow of daily work.

The secret to making it happen

One of the secrets of making your website accessible is to take a highly pragmatic approach so that accessibility compliance and improvement work simply becomes part of the everyday activity of the digital team. Accessibility then becomes more manageable and achievable.

You can do this by:

  • Working out exactly what needs to be done to achieve compliance by carrying out a thorough website accessibility test
  • Prioritising all the necessary actions and steps
  • Identifying all the small tasks and actions that need to be completed
  • Getting your team to action all the steps in smaller, achievable increments to keep you moving forwards
  • Regularly retesting to measure progress and to keep on top of everything that needs to be done

Why automated testing works

Regular automated website accessibility testing is the perfect way to make accessibility improvements part of your team’s regular workflow. While you will still need to make some manual checks, automated testing is far more convenient, efficient and cost-effective than taking a wholly manual approach.

Our accessibility testing identifies the priority areas for attention and even targets different reports to digital managers, page editors and developers.  You can get summary information such as the overall percentage of pages which are compliant, but you also have the ability to drill down to the detail to make the necessary improvements.

To learn more, contact us at info@sitemorse.com.

Image: Pexels/picjumbo.com