How to evaluate the accessibility of your website or app

Summary

• In this article you will find everything you need to evaluate the accessibility of your website, even if you have no prior experience.
• It includes information about key definitions, core concepts, workflow recommendations and a free audit template [example].
• With 20% of the Dutch population affected, accessibility is both a legal requirement and a human right.

• The audit process takes about 10 to 12 days. It starts with familiarising yourself with WCAG criteria and learning how to use a screen reader. Then you explore the website, and audit key pages. The result is a list of findings, prioritised based on severity and frequency.‍

What is an accessibility audit?

An accessibility audit is an assessment of how easily people with impairments can use a product or service. The ultimate goal is to ensure that people with various impairments (e.g., visual, auditory, cognitive, or motor disabilities) can fully access and engage with your platform.

Why conduct an accessibility audit?

• More than 3,4 million Dutch people have an impairment. That's 20% of the population.
• Accessibility is a human right. Great karma points.
• The EU legally requires many 'new' products to be accessible.
• Good accessibility reduces 'unnecessary' customer support requests.
• Making your product or service accessible improves your metrics (e.g. active users, click-through rates, profits, etc.)

New to digital accessibility? Start here.
‍We wrote several articles about the basics of accessibility, rules and legislation and how to get started with digital accessibility.

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The 5 steps of an accessibility audit

1. Get ready.

• ‍Get familiar with the WCAG criteria and how to check them on your website.
• Explore how to use a screen reader. A screen reader is a tool that reads out the content of a webpage to users with limited eyesight.‍

2. Explore the target website.

‍This helps you define the scope. Get an understanding of the following items:

• Page structure, navigation and layout
• Components (e.g. header, footers, forms, buttons, links)
• Services offered (e.g. help service, authentication)
• Type of content (e.g. video, audio, animations)

3. Define the scope.

• Certain criteria are specific to devices, certain types of content or services you offer on your website. Remove the criteria that are not applicable from your checklist.
• Instead of evaluating every page, choose the pages and functionalities that represent the broader experience of the website. This speeds up the audit process, which is especially helpful when evaluating large websites. 

4. Start the audit.

• Tag the pages you want to audit and create a visual overview that you can refer to during the audit. ‍
• Then use your list of WCAG criteria to evaluate the pages from top to bottom. Write down any issue you find. We like to use the following workflow:
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  1. Navigate the page using a keyboard
  2. Navigate the page using a screen reader
  3. Inspect all the individual UI elements
  4. Check the page structure using the Rotary functionality
  5. Check contrast and font sizes

5. Report findings.

‍You now have an overview of all the issues that need to be resolved.

• You may have dozens of issues, so score the issues based on frequency and severity to help your team prioritise what to pick up first.
• Optional: Add recommendations for solutions for every issue. The WCAG website has a list of common solutions for all criteria.
• Summarise key insights and present them to your team.
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And that’s it. You completed your first accessibility audit. Congrats!

Pro tip: Conduct a usability test. We always recommend doing a usability test with 5-6 people with limited eyesight or people with low literacy. Why?

• It helps prioritise the order of addressing issues.
• It helps uncover accessibility problems that can only be seen in context of use.
• It enables you to ask ‘why’ questions about issues and their importance, and about how issues impacts their experience.

Download the audit template (it's free!)

We believe that every organisation should actively work on improving their accessibility for their users. Since not everyone has the resources to hire an agency to work on this, we decided to publish our template. It includes:

• Practical step-by-step instructions on how to check the criteria
• Simplified WCAG descriptions
• Helpful links and references

Do you like our template? Help us spread the word on accessibility and share this article on LinkedIn. 

View template [example]

Get an accessibility audit in 2 weeks

We regularly conduct audits for clients such as Liberty Global and Rituals Cosmetics and would love to add you to that list.

Learn more about pricing and deliverables