Accessibility Audit
An accessibility audit will identify any barriers preventing people from using your Web site and doing business with you.
Unlike a bricks and mortar business, Web site barriers to access may not be immediately obvious. It takes expert knowledge of code, and experience of best practice accessibility techniques, to identify any problems.
Add up the disabled people, silver surfers, non-mainstream browser, PDA, and mobile phone users, and your site may be excluding as many as 30% of your visitors — and you may never realise it. If people can’t use your site, they can’t contact you to let you know.
Web sites aren’t automatically accessible
Most Web sites are not designed with accessibility in mind, either through a lack of awareness or know-how. Many Web designers are still using techniques from the last century. These techniques were necessary at the time, but required a mountain of code and produced inaccessible sites.
If your site is more than a couple of years old there’s a good chance it was made using obsolete, last century techniques.
The Disability Rights Commission’s 2004 formal investigation into Web site accessibility revealed the scale of the problem. It found an average of 108 points per page that may be a barrier to access.
Know where you stand with the DDA
The Disability Discrimination Act doesn’t mandate what level of accessibility a site should achieve. But, it does say service providers have a duty to make reasonable adjustments to any service that makes it impossible or unreasonably difficult for a disabled person to use.
PAS 78 (written by the DRC) suggests a minimum of Level Double-A conformance, because this is the standard recommended by the Web Accessibility Initiative.
An accessibility audit will give you an accurate view of how accessible your site is and where you stand with the DDA.
Beyond conformance
There are several online automated accessibility testing tools, such as Watchfire’s Bobby and Cynthia Says. These tools are useful for Web designers to check for things they may have overlooked, but not for assessing a site’s overall accessibility. Of the 65 WCAG checkpoints, only four can be tested that don’t require further manual checking.
After all, making your site accessible is about making it usable by people so they can buy your products and services, or read your marketing message, not so you can stick a Bobby Approved badge on the home page.
Unfortunately there are a lot of snake oil salesmen out there who will just run your site through an automated testing tool. They’ll get your home page to pass automatic validation, slap on an AAA badge and charge you a small fortune for the pleasure.
This is not accessibility. If no more people can use your site or do business with you, what’s the point? It won’t fool the people who still can’t access your site’s content. And it won’t stop you getting sued.
What an audit includes
Your site will be evaluated against WCAG 1 using a combination of manual tests and accessibility tools.
Once the audit is complete you will receive a comprehensive report, which will include the following:
- A jargon-free explanation of how accessible your site is.
- Who is locked out of your site; who may have a problem using it; and where you may be losing business.
- Which of the WCAG checkpoints it fails and their priority.
- Where you stand with the DDA.
- How well your site performs if various aspects are not supported, for example: images, Style Sheets, JavaScript and Flash.
- Web browser support.
- How well search engines can access your content.
- Recommendations of which accessibility problems should be addressed first, and what would be required to fix them.
Any additional tests can be included if requested.
What it costs
A 10 Web page accessibility audit costs £595.
Additional pages can be assessed for £30 each.
What now?
Get in touch and arrange an accessibility audit if you would like an idea of how accessible your site is.
Also, please feel free to contact me if you have any questions about Web accessibility or the DDA.