Website Accessibility Audits
Website accessibility is a measure of how accessible the content of a website is to people with disabilities.
Why Website Accessibility Matters
Website accessibility is an important issue for businesses for two reasons. Firstly, the third enactment of the Disability Discrimination Act came into force in the UK in October 2004, placing a legal obligation on website owners to take reasonable steps to ensure that sites are accessible to users with a range of disabilities. There is little case law at present to establish what will be considered ‘reasonable steps’ across a range of organisations, but the Disability Rights Commission is being proactive in bringing cases against companies which impose barriers to disabled people accessing services via the web. The second, more compelling reason for taking website accessibility seriously is that disabled people represent a significant proportion of the economically active population. For many disabled people, the Internet is their preferred method of accessing goods and services. However, disabled people are only able to use websites that have made provision for their special needs. No businessman would stand at the entrance to his store and tell every sixth customer that they weren’t allowed in, but every business with an inaccessible website is saying just that.
Website Accessibility Audits
A comprehensive accessibility audit provides an assessment of a website’s
current level of accessibility for users with a range of different disabilities.
The term accessibility audit is used because the website is being assessed
against a recognised accessibility standard. In most cases the standard
used for assessment is the Website Accessibility Initiative’s (WAI)
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 1.0, which have been produced by the
World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C).
Automated Accessibility Tests
Whilst other bodies produce accessibility guidelines, the Website Accessibility Initiative’s Guidelines are authoritative, objective, internationally recognised and kept under constant review. There are a number of computer programmes and/or websites which claim to carry out accessibility testing, but for a user who does not have experience of website development the results of using such automated tools produce more questions than answers. An Optillion website accessibility audit assesses both the website’s coding and its functionality using the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 as the benchmark.
A Broad Approach to Web Accessibilty
Some website accessibility auditing services appear to concentrate only on a limited range of sight related disabilities, whereas Optillion’s holistic approach to accessibility auditing gives consideration to all of the main types of website accessibility barrier: blindness, colour blindness, poor visual acuity, motor impairment and cognitive disabilities. An Optillion website accessibility audit results in a comprehensive report which not only details the website’s points of failure, but also provides guidance on what might be considered ‘reasonable steps’ to improve the website’s accessibility and what measures should be considered to make the website fully accessible.
