Website Accessibility Check Self-Assessment

Understanding Website Content Accessibility Best Practices

The self-assessment is based on parts of Website Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). State and local governments are required to meet WCAG2.1 AA in the next 2-3 years. Conforming with WCAG is also required for compliance with the European Accessibility Act and can help with Americans with Disabilities Act compliance.

• Color Contrast: Text and background colors need to have sufficient contrast so that users with color-blindness, low vision or other visual impairments can read your content. High contrast colors also help all users of mobile devices in high glare settings. Use WAVE to test the color contrast of your web pages.
• Alt text for images: Alt text provides a text alternative for users who cannot see your images.
• E-commerce: Out-of-the-box e-commerce tools frequently have accessibility issues. As a result, e-commerce sites are frequently sued for not being accessible.
• Drop Down Menus: In many themes and page builder tools, drop down menus can only be accessed through mouse hover. Users who only use a keyboard cannot access these menus.
• “Read More” and “Learn More” links: These are referred to as “ambiguous links” that do not provide screen reader users enough information about what content the link goes to. These types of links require aria-label attributes to provide more information to the user in order to be accessible.
• Forms: WCAG has a number of requirements for forms including how fields are labeled and how errors are handled. Forms need to be reviewed and tested carefully in order to ensure accessibility.
• Videos: Videos need to have captions and transcripts available in order to be accessible to the most users. Captions and transcripts are also helpful for users who are learning a language, are trying to watch your video in a noisy environment or in a quiet environment without headphones.
• Flashing, blinking or moving content: Content that flashes, blinks or has a lot of animation can cause issues for users with epilepsy or other motion-related conditions.
• Sliders and carousels: Sliders and carousels are often not built in a way that keyboard-only users can interact with. Also, studies have shown that users do not typically view the additional slides.
• Popups, models and accordions: Popups, modal and accordions can be hard for keyboard-only and screen reader users to interact with unless they are built properly. These content features can often have negative SEO impacts.
• PDFs: PDF documents require additional tagging in order to be accessible.
• Tables: Tables must be coded properly in order to be accessible for screen reader users.
• Toolbars: Accessibility toolbars can interfere with the settings and tools that users already have in place to interact with websites.
• Divi Theme: The popular Divi Theme has multiple inherent accessibility issues that require additional work to overcome.