How Do You Check Your Website’s Accessibility?

What Is Accessibility, and Why Is It Important?

Web accessibility is an important aspect to consider when designing a website. It ensures that all visitors, including those with disabilities, can easily navigate and interact with your website.

By prioritizing accessibility features such as adding alt text for images, enabling keyboard navigation, and designing clear and easy-to-understand layouts, you can improve the user experience and reach a wider audience. Making your website accessible not only benefits those with disabilities but also benefits all users.

The adoption of web accessibility goes down to simple compliance with regulations; it’s about promoting inclusivity and demonstrating your commitment to providing equal access to information and services on your website, consistent with ADA compliance requirements.

What Are the Types of Accessibility Testing?

Web accessibility testing involves various methods of evaluating digital content or platforms for website accessibility compliance with standards and guidelines.

Some of the common types of web accessibility testing include:

• Manual Testing: Accessibility assessments are a way to ensure that individuals with disabilities can use digital content. This process involves a manual review and interaction with the content to check its accessibility. Assistive technologies such as screen readers or keyboard navigation are used to replicate the experience of users with disabilities.
• Automated testing: QualiBooth’s accessibility checker is an excellent example of a robust automated testing solution for your web pages. It generates detailed reports for each visit, highlighting accessibility issues on your web pages.
• Functional testing: Evaluates how the functionality of a website or application works for users with disabilities. This includes testing interactive elements, forms, and multimedia content to ensure they are accessible and usable without accessibility errors.
• Visual testing: One aspect of accessibility is visual accessibility, which focuses on presenting content to ensure that it is easily perceivable and understandable by users with visual impairments. Visual testing ensures that visual elements such as color contrast, font size, and layout are optimized to support accessibility.
• Compatibility testing: Assesses the compatibility of web content with various assistive technologies and devices, such as sound screens, magnifying glasses or alternative input devices. Compatibility testing is a process that ensures users can effectively access content on various platforms and devices without any issues.
• User usability testing: One effective way to ensure website or application accessibility for people with disabilities is to conduct usability tests that gather direct feedback from these users.This approach helps us to create a more inclusive digital environment and provide equal opportunities for all users, regardless of their abilities.

By combining these web accessibility test tactics, businesses can identify, maintain and repair accessibility issues, ensuring that their digital space is easy to use for all visitors.

4 Fast Website Accessibility Checks

Web accessibility is easy to maintain, and you can check website accessibility anytime with just a couple of simple steps.

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Check Alt Text for Images and Other Non-text Content

Ensure alt text accurately describes images and non-text content for users relying on screen readers or who cannot view pictures—test website accessibility with screen reader software programs to confirm effective conveyance to users with disabilities.

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Check for Closed Captions and Transcripts on Videos

When creating videos, it is important to include complete captions or transcripts for accessibility. Test the captions to ensure they are enabled and functioning correctly.

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Check for Contrast

It is crucial to ensure that your website has proper contrast so that people with disabilities and health issues, such as epilepsy, can access it.

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Make Sure Your Site Is Keyboard-Friendly

Ensure all elements are keyboard accessible. Test using the keyboard for motor disabilities.

Best Practices to Keep In Your Mind

Maintaining and testing practices is essential to ensure everyone can access your website.

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Use Descriptive Titles, Links and Functional Controls

To improve the website’s accessibility, it is essential to use descriptive headings, links and functional controls. Ensure that page headings and links reflect the correct content, clearly representing what users can expect.

Provide available controls, such as buttons and input fields, that are easy to recognise and use, primarily through keyboard navigation.

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Allow Content to Be Resized up to 200%

Provide a flexible design that adapts to different fonts and screen sizes. Ensure you use relative font measures and item sizes to maintain the correct layout and readability, even after increasing the text size.

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Make Text More Legible and Readable

To make the text more legible and understandable, use appropriate font sizes and contrasting colors between the text and the background. Provide sufficient space between lines and avoid too long blocks of text to improve the absorption of information by users.

Allow Users to Control the Playback of Audio and Video

Functional controls such as pause, playback, and audio adjustment buttons should allow users to control audio and video playback. Ensure that these controls are accessible and usable via a keyboard, thus providing convenience for users with disabilities or those who prefer keyboard navigation.

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Add Subtitles to Your Video Content

To add subtitles to your video content, use video editing software that supports adding subtitle functionality. Translate the video’s audio into the desired language and insert the subtitles in a format compatible with the video player, allowing users to view it conveniently.

Allow Users to Turn off Animated Effects

To allow users to turn off animated effects, provide an option to turn off animations in the settings of the website or application. Turn on a switch or a button to turn off the animations, allowing users to control the visual effects and enhance their experience.

Conclusion

In today’s digitized world, websites have become essential to our daily lives. They provide us with information and services that we need in order to carry out our daily tasks, from online shopping to booking appointments and even accessing education.

However, not everyone can access these websites with the same ease and enjoyment as others. This is where website accessibility comes into play. The verification of website accessibility is of paramount importance in today’s world, where everyone has the right to equal access to information and services online.

By ongoing monitoring and improving the level of accessibility of the website, we can ensure that people with disabilities and users with different needs can use it with the same ease and enjoyment as others.

It’s also important to note that website accessibility isn’t just about catering to those with disabilities. It’s about catering to all users, regardless of their abilities.

For example, a website that is accessible to those with visual impairments through the use of screen readers and high contrast settings will also benefit users who are accessing the website from a noisy environment or those who prefer reading in larger fonts.

Ensuring website accessibility is not just a moral obligation – it’s also a legal one. Many countries have accessibility laws that require websites to be reachable to all users. By ensuring that our websites are accessible to all, we can avoid discrimination and ensure everyone can enjoy the website and its services equally.

Whether it is accessibility for people with visual, hearing or mobility impairments, website accessibility checking is crucial in creating a more inclusive online space that reflects the values of equality and accessibility for all.

Investing in improving the accessibility of the website not only benefits users but also the organization itself, underlining its commitment to social responsibility and sustainable development.

Website accessibility is an essential aspect of website design. It is vital to monitor and improve website accessibility to cater to users with different needs and disabilities. By providing equal access to information and services online, we can ensure that everyone can enjoy the benefits of the internet equally.

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Frequently Asked Questions

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Why Is It Essential to Maintain My Website’s Accessibility Regularly?

Regularly checking the accessibility of your website is essential as it ensures that all users, including those with disabilities, can access the information and services you provide. This improves the user experience and creates a more inclusive online space.

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Which Instruments Can Help Check the Accessibility?

Different tools and methods may be used to verify web accessibility, including Qualibooth’s online tools for automated verification, manual testing with simulated use by disabled users and testing with real disabled users.

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