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Audit of website to identify and resolve and enhance accessibility for people with disabilities and enabling your users to have a better experience of your web presenceWeb Content Accessibility Guidelines, AODA, WCAG, Web accessibility, WCAG 2.1, AODA compliance, AODA Canada, AODA standards

At CBAOS, we conduct accessibility audits on your website which helps your users to have better visibility, compliance, and overall performance. Our website accessibility audits also makes it easier to identify the areas hurting the accessibility of your company’s website and provides a guide for the elements to be improved.Accessibility Audits Are Vital'Accessibility' refers to the ability of people to access something (can be a place, service, or product) regardless of their physical or mental condition. So ‘website accessibility’ means making sure that everyone, including those with disabilities, are able to log on and use your site with ease.

It is important that the internet as a whole is accessible by people with disabilities too. By making your website more user-friendly to, you can also increase your audience and better adhere better to web design, usability, and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) best practices. Our team at CBAOS have the experience in Application Security Assessment, Advanced Security Assessments, Incident Response Services and Website Accessbility Audits and Services with all industries like Education, Energy, Finance, Fintech, Government, Healthcare, Legal, Manufacturing, Media, Nonprofit, Property, Retail, Technology, Transport.

Common accessibility mistakes on a website include ineffective translation processes, choosing style over functionality, and failing to comply with governmental policies relating to web accessibility like AODA.

Our team at CBAOS conduct accessibility audits in an effective way to identify and resolve any existing issues with your website. This facilitates your users to have a better experience and also your organization’s internet presence exists without any legal issues.

Web Accessibility ToolbarThe Web Accessibility Toolbar (WAT) has been developed to aid manual examination of web pages for a variety of aspects of accessibility.... The toolbar provides easy access to functionality to: identify components of a web page and provide access to alternate views of page content.

How to Conduct an Accessibility Audit on Your WordPress websiteStep 1: Review the WCAG 2.0 GuidelinesThe Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 is one of the most useful tools you can refer to when conducting an accessibility audit on your Word Press website. It contains a wide range of suggestions and guidelines for making your content and site more accessible to those with common disabilities, such as blindness, deafness, cognitive restrictions, photo-sensitivity, and more.

The foundation of the WCAG guidelines consists of four major principles a website should meet to be considered accessible. It should be perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust. In more concrete terms, you’ll want to keep in mind 12 main goals for making your site more accessible:Step 2: Create a Review ChecklistOnce you’ve reviewed the WCAG 2.0 Guidelines and have a general understanding of its important aspects, you’ll be better positioned to create a checklist for your WordPress accessibility audit.

To get started, you can explore your website on the front end, as if you were a new visitor. Use the WCAG guidelines to make a list of important elements to test and review, including images and graphics, links, videos, and navigation.

Some examples of questions you might ask (relevant to the 12 goals listed above) include:

Do your videos have subtitles and do images have alt text?

Do all links work properly?

Are you able to comfortably navigate between pages?

Can you navigate through the site using only your keyboard?

Can the text be translated into other languages?

Step 3: Run Your Site Through the W3C Markup Validation ToolThe W3C Markup Validation Tool checks the markup validity of your site’s documents in various web languages, including HTML, XHTML, SMIL, MathML, and so on. It verifies that they follow the specific set of rules and criteria of each particular language.

This free, online tool makes it easy to validate a web page to ensure it’s of high quality. W3C validation helps to ensure better SEO rankings, site performance, readability, and consistency across various browsers. It can also tell you where there are any errors in your code.

To use it, simply copy and paste your site’s address into the text area on the main pageStep 4: Conduct Screen Reader Compatibility TestingMillions of Canadians have some form of visual impairment. Therefore, many web users use screen reader software applications, which convert text that is displayed on a screen into synthesized speech.

In addition to converting text into audible formats for the visually impaired, these applications also help them navigate your site. That’s another reason why alt text on images is so important: screen reader software will read that text to the user, so they can understand the context of images and other media.

There are a handful of tools you can use to conduct screen reader compatibility testing. If you’re not sure where to start, the ChromeVox extension and The Accessibility Viewer are two quality options.

Step 5: Check Your Content’s Color ContrastAnother of the most common issues with website accessibility is the contrast (or lack thereof) between text and its background. Using color contrast analysis tools in your accessibility audit will identify any issues, in accordance with the WCAG Guidelines.

You can do this by using a handful of free online tools, such as ColorSafe and A11Y Color Tester. Let’s demonstrate how this works using the latter tool. First, you’ll copy and paste your URL into the text box, and select Check Contrast:

Step 6: Verify That Keyboard-Only Navigation WorksWhen conducting an accessibility audit on your WordPress site, it’s important to make sure that any visitor would be able to navigate the site using only their keyboard. For example, you’ll want to avoid animated or drop-down buttons that can’t be used with a screen reader.

To check how well keyboard-only navigation works on your website, you can follow these steps:

Click on the address bar of your website in a browser.

Using only the keyboard, not the mouse, try to move about the site.

Use the Tab button to see whether you are able to navigate to different parts of the menu, select links, and interact with key functionality.

Ideally, you should be able to tab through the site in the same order as the page layout (including any drop-down navigation menus). It’s also important that there is a keyboard cursor focus indicating which item the user is on. This isn’t something many people consider until they no longer have a mouse cursor to rely on.

ConclusionRegularly-scheduled accessibility audits help improve the user experience and increase engagement. The more accessible you make your website to those with disabilities, the more user-friendly you make it for everyone.

As we’ve seen, there are six steps you can follow to conduct a thorough accessibility audit, including:

Reviewing the WCAG 2.0 Guidelines to understand the basic principles of website accessibility.

Creating a review checklist to use as a guiding framework for conducting the audit.

Validating your code with the W3C Markup Tool, to ensure all the languages your site uses meet technical criteria.

Conducting screen reader compatibility testing, to improve the experience for visually-impaired visitors.

Checking the color contrast of your site with free online tools.

Testing to make sure users can navigate your site using only a keyboard.

To understand the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), you have to take a step back to when the web was still in its infancy. Picture this: it’s 1989 (lots of hair spray, neon colors, popped collars are rampant) and Tim Berners-Lee and his team at CERN invented the "World Wide Web." Pretty amazing, when you think about it. A few years later, in 1994, Berners-Lee founded the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) as a governing body of the internet.