What does an accessibility audit look like?
When it comes to designing and maintaining a thriving business presence online, one of the most commonly overlooked aspects is accessibility. A website whose design and functionality comply with regulatory standards under the ADA opens the door to an additional 12%+ of the U.S. consumer market and demonstrates a robust framework for usability that boosts SEO rankings and grows the brand.
The best way to achieve this is, of course, to design and build a website from the ground up that incorporates accessibility best practices. However, since most businesses (a whopping 98%!) aren’t coming out of the blocks with an accessibility-optimized site, the next best method for achieving these business-savvy metrics is through the use of a top-line website accessibility auditing service.
But what does an accessibility audit look like? Heading into the process with a solid expectation of what it entails is a reasonable starting point. So let’s look at what it takes to move through the auditing process and assess, analyze, and re-imagine website accessibility objectives from the first approach through the final review.
The Five Components of Testing
When it comes to conducting an audit of your website, there are essentially five components or phases of testing, each of which offers an added layer of knowledge and advanced success. Let’s take a look.
1. Manual testing of each page and each element
At AllyADA, one of the things that really sets us apart from our competitors is our team of CPACC-certified accessibility specialists comprised of sighted, blind, and low-visibility individuals. This diverse team conducts an in-depth manual test of each page and each element of your website. To be clear, this manual test involves real people attempting to use your website in the way it is intended in order to determine if there are any blatant or hidden roadblocks to accessibility.
While we do also utilize the available software to scan and assess your website, we do so as a preliminary screening of potential functionality issues. Merely running software is an insufficient and inadequate way to ensure ADA compliance because it fails to recognize certain issues or fails to recognize them in totality. Software can be used to spot something from a data point perspective, but it doesn’t mimic the practical impact of these issues or capture the ways that blind and low visibility users attempt to work around them (and frequently can’t).
The greatest value comes from our manual testing, where real-world problems are identified in authentic ways by the people who encounter them on a daily basis. This approach provides the most insight into the specific source of the accessibility issue and how to best correct it.
2. Creating a report for each inaccessible element (with examples)
Once all of the various inaccessible elements have been identified by our combination of software and human resources, we build a comprehensive report to show you exactly what the issues are, why they are incompatible with ADA-compliance, and what can be done about them.
This report offers a straightforward, concise, and clear understanding of precisely what needs to be addressed on your specific website to bring it into full ADA compliance and open your brand, your products, and your business future to a fully untapped segment of the consumer market. Each identified element includes examples.
3. Explaining the report
We don’t just provide the report; we provide a detailed explanation of the report so that nothing gets lost in translation. This is a significant advantage when you or your web designer may not be well-versed in accessibility functionality across a web platform. Receiving a report is one thing, but making sure that you understand the nuances and intrciacies of that report is an AllyADA thing.
4. Consulting with the developers
One of the highlights of our service is our commitment to ensuring that your web developers are equipped to build the necessary accessibility upgrades into your website. Unfortunately, one of the well-known difficulties with making meaningful ADA-compliance upgrades is that most web developers have only a limited understanding of how certain web design features impact accessibility from the perspective of blind and low visibility users. And, developers sometimes pin responsibility for accessible functionality on the blind and low visibility community, rather than take ownership of it from a foundational level.
For instance, developers who understand that certain widgets and plug-ins improve website functionality for blind and low visibility users, might not understand that simply having access to these advances does not necessarily correct for accessibility problems. In addition, many accessibility problems exist outside of the improvement afforded by these tools. By hosting a face-to-face (Zoom) meeting with your web developers, our accessibility specialists can answer, explain, and enlighten them on a nuanced level regarding the specifics of each problem and the best practices for attaining optimal fixes.
We understand that after all, a report is only as good as your understanding of what to do with the data once you receive it. With an AllyADA audit, your developers will never be left trying to research or problem solve solutions. We have the knowledge and we happily share it with our clients.
5. Confirming the website is accessible
After your developers have had an opportunity to review and implement our audit findings and accessibility upgrades, we conduct a second manual sweep of your website to confirm successful results. Confirmation of accessibility and ADA compliance is something only blind and low visibility users can confer with hands on, experiential review, one page at a time.