Regular accessibility audits are essential for identifying and addressing potential barriers that could prevent users from fully engaging with your digital content.
Why regular accessibility audits are crucial
- Ensuring compliance: Accessibility standards, such as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), are regularly updated to reflect new best practices and emerging technologies. Regular audits help ensure that your website continues to meet these evolving standards and remains compliant with legal requirements.
- Improving user experience: An accessible website provides a better user experience for everyone, not just people with disabilities. Regular audits help you identify usability issues that may affect all users, leading to a more inclusive and seamless online experience.
- Mitigating legal risks: In many countries, websites are required by law to be accessible. Regular audits help you identify and fix issues before they lead to legal action or complaints, protecting your organization from potential fines and reputational damage.
- Staying ahead of changes: As your website evolves with new content, features, and updates, it’s important to ensure that these changes do not introduce new accessibility barriers. Regular audits help you stay ahead of these changes and ensure ongoing accessibility.
- Fostering a culture of accessibility: Regular audits reinforce the importance of accessibility within your organization. They demonstrate your commitment to inclusivity and encourage all teams to prioritize accessibility in their work.
Steps to conduct regular accessibility audits
Conducting regular accessibility audits involves a systematic process that ensures your website is thoroughly evaluated for accessibility issues. Here’s how to do it effectively:
1. Establish a regular audit schedule
Set a schedule for conducting accessibility audits to ensure they are performed consistently.
- Quarterly or biannual audits: Depending on the size and complexity of your website, schedule audits quarterly or biannually. Regular audits allow you to catch and address issues before they become widespread problems.
- Post-launch audits: Conduct an accessibility audit after launching new features, significant updates, or redesigns. This ensures that new content or functionality meets accessibility standards from the start.
2. Use automated tools for initial assessments
Automated tools are an excellent starting point for accessibility audits, helping you quickly identify common issues.
- Silktide platform: Silktide is a powerful tool that can automatically scan your website for accessibility issues. It provides a comprehensive overview of your website’s accessibility, highlighting areas that need improvement and offering actionable recommendations. Silktide also allows you to monitor your progress over time and track how well your website meets accessibility standards.
- Regular monitoring: Use Silktide’s monitoring capabilities to continuously track your website’s accessibility between audits. This helps you stay on top of any emerging issues and ensures that your site remains accessible over time.
3. Conduct manual accessibility testing
While automated tools are invaluable, they cannot catch every accessibility issue. Manual testing is essential for a thorough audit.
- Silktide’s manual accessibility assessment services: Consider using Silktide’s manual accessibility assessment services to complement your automated audits. These services involve experts who manually review your website to identify issues that automated tools might miss, such as keyboard navigation problems, content readability, and the usability of interactive elements.
- Screen reader testing: As part of your manual audit, test your website using a screen reader, such as NVDA, VoiceOver or the Silktide Accessibility Checker. This helps you understand how users with visual impairments experience your content and identify any barriers they might encounter.
- Keyboard navigation testing: Ensure that all interactive elements on your website, such as forms, buttons, and links, are fully accessible via keyboard navigation. This is crucial for users with mobility impairments who rely on keyboards rather than a mouse.
4. Review and prioritize issues
After identifying accessibility issues, prioritize them based on severity and impact.
- High-priority issues: Focus first on issues that have the most significant impact on user accessibility, such as missing alt text on images, poor color contrast, or non-functional keyboard navigation.
- Long-term improvements: Address lower-priority issues as part of your ongoing website maintenance. This might include optimizing content for readability or improving the structure of headings and links.
- Documentation: Document all identified issues, along with recommended solutions and a timeline for addressing them. This ensures that your team has a clear action plan for improving accessibility.
5. Implement changes and retest
Once issues are identified and prioritized, work with your team to implement the necessary changes.
- Collaborate across teams: Accessibility improvements often require collaboration between different departments, including design, development, and content teams. Ensure that everyone is aligned on the goals and understands their role in implementing changes.
- Retest after changes: After making changes, retest the affected areas of your website to ensure that the issues have been resolved. This step is critical to confirming that your fixes are effective and have not introduced new accessibility problems.
6. Report findings to leadership
Regularly report the results of your accessibility audits to senior leadership to keep them informed and engaged.
- Audit reports: Create detailed reports that summarize the findings of your accessibility audits, including the issues identified, actions taken, and progress made. Highlight key successes as well as areas that still need attention.
- Action plans: Include a clear action plan with timelines for addressing any remaining issues. This helps leadership understand the ongoing efforts required to maintain accessibility and secure the necessary resources.
7. Continuously improve and adapt
Accessibility is an ongoing process that requires continuous improvement.
- Feedback loops: Encourage feedback from users, especially those with disabilities, to identify any accessibility issues that might not have been caught during audits. Use this feedback to inform future audits and improvements.
- Stay updated: Keep your team informed about updates to accessibility standards, such as new WCAG guidelines or changes in assistive technology. Regular training and education are essential for staying ahead of accessibility challenges.
Leveraging the Silktide platform for comprehensive audits
The Silktide platform offers a range of features that make it an invaluable tool for conducting accessibility audits:
- Automated scans: Silktide’s automated scans identify common accessibility issues across your website, such as missing alt text, improper heading structure, and color contrast problems.
- Detailed reports: The platform provides detailed reports with actionable insights, helping you understand exactly what needs to be fixed and how to address it.
- Monitoring and alerts: Silktide allows you to continuously monitor your website’s accessibility and set up alerts for any new issues that arise, ensuring that your site remains compliant over time.
- Manual assessments: For a deeper dive, Silktide’s manual accessibility assessment services offer expert reviews that complement automated testing, ensuring that your website meets the highest accessibility standards.
Conducting regular accessibility audits is essential for maintaining a website that is accessible, user-friendly, and legally compliant. As a web manager or senior leader, your role in overseeing these audits and ensuring that your organization allocates the necessary resources is critical to success.
By leveraging tools like the Silktide platform and its manual accessibility assessment services, you can effectively monitor, assess, and improve your website’s accessibility. Remember, accessibility is not a one-time effort but an ongoing commitment to inclusivity. Regular audits help ensure that your digital presence remains accessible to all users, creating a more inclusive and welcoming online environment for everyone.