February 19, 2025
Website Accessibility
Website accessibility means that websites are designed and developed so that people with disabilities can use them. More specifically, people can:
- perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with the website
- contribute to the website, if they have the option to
Website accessibility contains all disabilities that affect the interaction with the website, including:
- auditory
- cognitive
- neurological
- physical
- speech
- visual
Website accessibility also benefits people without disabilities, for example:
- people using mobile phones, smart watches, smart TVs, and other devices with small screens, different input modes, etc.
- older people
- people who have a broken arm or lost their glasses
- people in environments with bright sunlight or in an environment where they can’t listen to audio
Here is a video with examples of how accessibility is essential for people with disabilities and useful for everyone in a variety of situations.
Accessibility is important for individuals, businesses, and society
The Web is an important resource in many aspects of life: education, employment, government, commerce, healthcare, recreation, and more. The Web must be accessible in order to provide equal access and equal opportunity to people with diverse disabilities. Access to information and communications technologies, including the Web, is defined as a basic human right in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD).
The Web offers many people with disabilities the possibility of never-before-seen access to information and interaction.
There is also a strong business case for accessibility.
As shown in the previous section, accessible design improves overall user experience and satisfaction across different devices and for older users. Accessibility can enhance your brand, drive innovation, and extend your market reach.
Web accessibility is required by law in many situations.
Why should companies focus on accessibility testing?
It ensures fairness and equal opportunities for people with disabilities so they can participate fully in the digital world. There is an emphasis on accessibility testing for the following reasons:
- Legal Compliance
- Inclusivity
Legal Compliance
To comply with legal requirements, websites and apps must be accessible to people with disabilities globally.
- In 2023, 77% of accessibility lawsuits are being filed against organizations with under $25 million in revenue.
- The fine for these regulations is about $75,000–$150,000, a huge sum of money for growing companies, especially compared to the cost of making your website accessible.
Inclusivity
Inclusion is a social responsibility that can positively impact the organization’s reputation.
- By 2050, it is estimated that 16% of the world’s population will be over 65, meaning the need for accessible digital experiences is increasing.
- By providing inclusion to individuals with disabilities, businesses can access a larger customer base, ensuring business growth and sustainability.
- Apart from the business perspective, it also holds a moral responsibility.
Making the website accessible
Website accessibility depends on several parts working together, including web technologies, web browsers, authoring tools, etc.
The W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) develops specifications, guidelines, techniques, and resources that describe accessibility solutions. These are considered international standards for web accessibility.
Many aspects of accessibility are somewhat easy to understand and implement. Some accessibility solutions are more complex and require more knowledge to be implemented.
It is efficient and effective to implement accessibility from the very beginning of projects, so you don’t need to go back and re-do the work.
Evaluating accessibility
When developing a website, evaluate accessibility early and throughout the development process to identify problems early, when it is easier to address them. Comprehensive evaluation to determine if a website meets all accessibility guidelines takes more effort.
There are tools that help with evaluation. However, no tool alone can determine if a site meets accessibility guidelines. A human evaluation is still required to determine if a site is accessible.
Understanding digital accessibility testing standards
The WCAG compliance provides a big framework for creating web content that is perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust for all users, including those with disabilities.
- WCAG stands for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.
- It is a set of internationally recognized guidelines developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to ensure digital content is accessible to people with disabilities.
4 WCAG Principles
The main goal of any accessibility testing should be to determine if a web application is compatible with the 4 WCAG principles known as POUR:
- Perceivable
- Operable
- Understandable
- Robust
There are also 3 conformance levels in WCAG:
- Level A is the minimum conformance level to ensure web content is accessible for most users with disabilities.
- Level AA is a higher level of conformance than Level A and is designed to ensure web content is accessible to a wide range of users with disabilities, including those with severe disabilities.
- Level AAA is the highest level of conformance and is designed to ensure that web content is accessible to all users, regardless of disability.
Examples
Alternative text for images
Images should include alternative text (alt text) in the markup/code.
If alt text isn’t provided for images, the image information is inaccessible, for example, to people who can’t see and use a screen reader that reads aloud the information on a page, including the alt text for the visual image.
When alt text is provided, the information is available to people who are blind, as well as to people who turn off images (for example, in areas with expensive or low bandwidth). It’s also available to technologies that can’t see images, such as search engines.
Keyboard input
Some people can’t use a mouse, including many older users. An accessible website does not rely on the mouse, it makes all functionality available from a keyboard. Then people with disabilities can use assistive technologies that mimic the keyboard, such as speech input.
Transcripts for audio
Just like images aren’t available to people who can’t see, audio files aren’t available to people who can’t hear. Providing a text transcript makes the audio information accessible to people who are deaf or have bad hearing, as well as to search engines and other technologies.
It’s easy and relatively cheap for websites to provide transcripts. There are also transcription services that create text transcripts in HTML format.
Color contrast
Testing the color contrast of text against its background to ensure it meets the WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) standard, such as a minimum contrast ratio for normal text and large text.
Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) testing
Ensuring that ARIA roles and attributes are correctly applied to interactive elements like buttons, form controls, and live regions to enhance the screen reader experience.
This article was written by Dan Grigorescu, QA Specialist at WPRiders
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