Accessibility: Tips for checking the accessibility of your website

Testing for accessibility is the key to designing a website without obstacles and barriers. But many people think it’s difficult to put an accessible website into practice. In this article, you will therefore learn practical tips that you can use to test your website for accessibility.

Checking the accessibility of your website is the first step towards designing an accessible website. If you run a website, you may have already flinched at the topic of accessibility and the expected complexity. Wrongly so! Here are simple tips for checking the accessibility of your website.

A recent report on accessibility compiled by Webaim.com states that “51,379,694 different accessibility errors were found on one million websites – that’s an average of 51.4 errors per website”.

You can imagine how alarming this figure is for millions of people living with a disability around the world. After all, browsing the internet is not very attractive if the website is not adapted to your needs. Accessibility not only ensures a pleasant user experience for people with a disability, but also makes the user experience seamless and appealing for everyone.

Why test for accessibility?

Millions of websites out there don’t meet accessibility standards and still work well. Or do they not? Honestly, websites that neglect accessibility don’t do well. They ignore a huge pool of users and miss out on a lot of connections and sales because of it.

Accessibility testing is necessary because everyone should be able to access and use your website without any problems, regardless of the disability they live with.

By testing your website for accessibility, you can identify the issues that affect how well someone can access and use your website. You can then solve these issues one by one with the right tools and guidance – based on the findings from the audit.

Ultimately, conducting an accessibility audit can help your organisation make great strides. To name just a few of the benefits of an accessibility audit:

• Reach more people and improve customer loyalty
• Differentiate your brand and your company from your competitors’ websites
• Help design your website and improve the user experience
• Make your website more visible on the Internet
• Offer protection from legal liability

When you dive into the actual test, the first step is to know the most important accessibility guidelines.

The most important accessibility guidelines

To carry out a successful accessibility check, you first need to know what you are checking in the first place. To do this, familiarise yourself with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) – the current guidelines for accessibility. These guidelines can be divided into five categories that determine whether your website is accessible:

1. Perceptible. Can users easily perceive the information and components of your website?
2. Operable. Are your navigation and user interface components operable?
3. Understandable. Are your information and user interfaces understandable?
4. Robust. Is your content robust enough for a variety of users, including assistive technologies?
5. Conformity. Does your website meet the requirements of WCAG 2.1?

You should take enough time to read and understand the accessibility guidelines. Especially if you are new to the topic of accessibility, the guidelines can be somewhat complex at first. It’s best to make a few notes so that you know what to look out for when checking your website. And why it is important to make your website more accessible, especially for people with disabilities.

Next, you create an audit checklist.

Creating an audit checklist

Now that you’ve read WCAG 2.1, it’s time to create a checklist for your accessibility audit. In other words: What do you need to look for on your website to determine whether you fulfil the individual accessibility guidelines?

Make a list of the essential elements you need to test and review for each WCAG 2.1 category. For example, one of the success criteria for the “Perceivable Content” category is non-text content. For all non-text content, there must be a text alternative that fulfils the same purpose.

Therefore, check all non-text content to see if it has a text alternative. This may mean that you have subtitles for your videos, alt text for your images and that you ensure that your non-text content can be translated into Braille, symbols or a simpler language.

You must also evaluate the page templates in comparison to the individual pages.

Check templates for accessibility

Most websites contain hundreds of websites. It is almost impossible to check every single one. Nevertheless, many websites are designed using a template.

This means that the content of a website may be different, but the structure and layout are the same because you are using a template. Consequently, the way someone navigates the site and interacts with the content is also similar.

It’s much easier to tackle your accessibility audit if you check page templates rather than individual pages. Another tip for checking the accessibility of your website is to start with an accessibility scan.

Start with an accessibility scan

It’s difficult to know where to start when checking the accessibility of your website. There are so many guidelines to consider that a manual check alone can be incredibly time-consuming and confusing. However, an accessibility scan can help.

An accessibility scan can help you identify some of the main issues that people with disabilities have when using your website and give you suggestions for improvement.

Accessibility scanners are a productive starting point. But they are only a starting point. Unfortunately, accessibility scans only cover about a quarter of potential accessibility issues. So a thorough accessibility audit of your website requires both a scan to quickly fix problems and a person to look at the rest of the accessibility guidelines and make the necessary improvements.

In addition to an accessibility scan, you can use analyses to find gaps in the accessibility of your website.

Use tools to test accessibility

Data analytics tools are useful for many things, such as day-to-day business insights, customer preferences, growth opportunities, team productivity and industry intelligence.

Although analytics tools are not intended to provide assistance in resolving accessibility issues, they can provide a comprehensive insight into the gaps in the user experience. In other words, the hurdles that could potentially be related to accessibility issues.

For example, let’s say someone can’t find an important page on your website. Maybe you realise that they are using the navigation bar differently than you expected from the data analysis. Simple navigation is an important part of accessibility. Adapting your navigation to the way people use it will improve the user experience and accessibility.

Data analytics tools can also help you find out more about your target audience and their lifestyle habits, which can be very helpful when designing a website that supports all the people in your target audience.

Another tip for checking the accessibility of your website is to give people with disabilities the opportunity to test your website

Let users test your website

It is good practice to have your website tested by users with a disability. You could also test the site yourself – but if you don’t live with a disability, it can be difficult to determine whether your website is helping or harming people with a disability.

Put together a group of test users with different disabilities. Let them go through your website and find out how easy it is to navigate and work with. Let them give you feedback on what works well and what doesn’t. Based on this feedback, you can customise your website to improve usability.

If you are unable to check the accessibility of your website yourself, you should commission an accessibility professional to carry out the check.

Get accessibility professionals on board

As mentioned above, website accessibility can get complicated. If you can’t take the time to familiarise yourself with the topic of web accessibility, it’s best to enlist the help of accessibility experts.

Accessibility professionals know exactly …

1. what to look out for when it comes to web accessibility,
2. recognise specific problems with your website and
3. can show you how to fix the problems.

That being said, hiring an accessibility agency can be expensive. A comprehensive audit can cost up to $2,500. So before you consider this option, make sure you have the funds to hire a third party to do the audit.

In the meantime, you can already use some tools such as Google Lighthouse & Co. to test your website for accessibility. This will give you a rough overview of the errors that you should tackle first on the way to greater accessibility.

Conclusion on web accessibility testing

Testing the accessibility of your website is crucial. Designing an accessible website ensures that you meet the needs of users with disabilities while providing a good user experience for everyone. Use the tips above to check the accessibility of your website and help make the web a space for everyone.