How Do I Verify My Web Provider Is Keeping My Site WCAG Compliant?
Ensuring your website remains accessible to all users is a critical part of modern web development and legal compliance. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) provide the benchmark for accessible design, and it’s essential to verify that your web provider adheres to these standards. In this article, we’ll walk you through practical steps to confirm your website’s WCAG compliance and introduce a free tool that makes the process easier.
Why WCAG Compliance Matters
WCAG compliance means that your website meets accessibility standards that help users with disabilities navigate and interact with your content. These guidelines cover various aspects of web design, including color contrast, keyboard navigation, alternative text for images, and more. A compliant website not only serves a broader audience but also helps you avoid potential legal issues and enhances overall user experience.
Verification Option 1: Request an independent audit
If you’re serious about ensuring full compliance, consider hiring an accessibility consultant like Shine More Online. We can conduct in-depth reviews and provide tailored recommendations to remedy any issues identified by automated scans, as well as manual auditing which reveals more complex or nuanced issues which automated tools fail to detect. We aim to charge half what our competitors do for equal quality or better.
Verification Option 2: Test what you can!
1) Perform Manual Keyboard Navigation Testing
While automated tools are incredibly useful, they cannot catch every accessibility issue. Manual testing is a vital complement to automation. One simple method is to use your keyboard to navigate your website:
Cycle Through Links with the Tab Key:
Press the Tab key repeatedly to move through interactive elements like links and buttons on your site. This helps you check whether:
Focus is Indicated:
A visible focus indication is a design cue that shows which element is currently selected. This is essential for users who navigate via the keyboard or assistive technologies.
Focus indication typically involves a change in styling—such as an outline, color change, or underlining—on the focused element. If you press Tab and notice that certain interactive elements are skipped or that the focus state is not clearly visible, your site may need adjustments.
Test for Logical Navigation Order:
Ensure that the order in which elements receive focus makes sense and follows a logical flow. This ensures users can navigate the site without getting lost.
2) Use Automated Accessibility Testing Tools
Automated tools can scan your website for common accessibility issues, such as low contrast ratios or missing alt text. One highly recommended tool is the Accessible Web Helper, available as a free extension on Google Chrome. You can install it at no cost and without providing a credit card. Here’s how to get started:
Install the Accessible Web Helper:
Visit the Chrome Web Store and add the extension to your Google Chrome browser.
Run a Page Scan:
Once installed, open your website in Chrome and click the extension icon. Then, simply select “Scan Page”. The tool will analyze your page and highlight issues related to WCAG standards.
Conclusion
Providing a preliminary verification of whether your web provider is paying attention to WCAG compliance can be relatively simple effort. For most sites, tabbing through the focus order and running an accessibility scan can reveal when your provider is leaving a lot of errors on the table, however just because a scan comes back clear this does not mean there are not more complex or nuanced accessibility issues on your site.
A more complete manual audit is often required to ensure compliance. Please take this guide merely as an example of how to potentially check if the issue is not being addressed.
