Accessibility in the technology/digital sector is defined as ensuring a digital product, such as a website, is as usable as possible by everyone, including people with a range of disabilities.
An accessibility audit is a thorough evaluation of how accessible your organisation’s digital products and services are. While this commonly refers to a website or mobile app used by customers, it can also include internal systems and intranets.
The purpose of an Accessibility Audit is to establish how well a particular digital platform performs in terms of access and ease of use by a wide range of potential users, including people with disabilities and the visually impaired. With that being said, it’s not all about people with disabilities – accessibility also applies to making your channels accessible in the widest context possible i.e. on mobile devices, older or lower spec devices, smart watches, TVS etc.
How does an accessibility audit work?
- Our experts will hold an initial consultation with you to understand your current accessibility strategy and status
- We then use industry-standard software to perform an automated test of your digital channels to highlight any accessibility issues
- In conjunction with this, we run manual checks to audit each page/element against WCAG standards
- Once we have performed the tests, we will scope potential solutions that you can implement to increase your performance and compliance
- We then advise you of our findings and recommend our improvements, usually in the form of a written report along with an in person/virtual meeting
- Our accessibility experts are optionally on hand to assist you with implementing our recommendations.
Reasons you may need an accessibility audit:
Compliance
Be confident that you are complying with WCAG guidelines (if your organisation is in the public sector) and avoid any risk of legal action
Customer experience
Improve your customer experience and bring a positive impact on the bottom line by ensuring your services are available to all
Employee experience
Make work better for your employees, allowing them to perform their job with suitable systems, tools and resources they need
Create an accessible culture
Drive the importance of accessibility among your organisation by educating teams on the importance of accessibility, this can also be done via our workshops
Some examples of typical scenarios encountered during an accessibility audit:
Missing alt text for images
All images should have text to convey their meaning to screen readers
Low contrast text
The brightness of the text shouldn’t be too close to the background brightness
Empty buttons
Buttons must explain what they are for. E.g. if you were to use a + sign as a button that will add something to a page – a screen reader will struggle to translate the purpose of this element
Document language
It’s important to include a valid ‘lang’ attribute on your website as when users configure a screen reader, they will select a language
Videos
Ensure you provide audio descriptions and transcripts
Headings
Use them effectively to convey the structure of the page, the main title of the page should be the only H1.
Can we help?
We recommend that you do an accessibility audit at the beginning of a project to save time and money in the long run.
Please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us if you require any further information about our accessibility audits and consultancy services.
Give us a call on 020 8050 4132 or submit a form.