WCAG Compliance Auditing

Are you looking for accessibility experts to help you reach compliance with the ADA (commercial) or Section 508/504 (government), or California's Unruh Act and other state accessibility laws? By conforming to the Web Content Accessibilty Guideline, you can avoid on-going legal actions and ensure universal access to your website. Today, consumers are interested in aligning with brands that reflect their values, and today brands that fail to be digitally inclusive face not just legal risk, but also brand reputatiion risk. In combining our Propeller Media Works team of web designers and developers with our Accessibility.Works team of web accessibility consultants, we can provide both the WCAG auditing services and website remediation services to fix your website to reduce risk and expand website audiences.

 

508 / ADA Compliance starts with a WCAG Audit

Before you can fix your website, you need to identify each violation. Our team of senior-level digital accessibility experts deliver detailed 3-factor audits that combine automated, manual and assistive technogy testing. 

A few quick points to be aware of:

  • There is no quick and cheap solution that actually work. No widgets or plugins will fix this. Avoid short-cut "overlay" toolbar solutions. Absolutely avoid alternate "accessible" websites.
  • The risk is real and growing, and not expected to go away. 
  • There are two parts to the process: Audit and Remediation. The more you invest in quality auditing and reporting, the less your remediation costs will be, and the faster you'll reach WCAG compliance.

 

Before continuing, consider first where your website is in its lifecycle. Has your website been refreshed in the past 4 years? No? Then consider saving the expense for auditing and remediation, and invest that into a fresh site designed and built by a team such as ours with accessibility design and development expertise.

 

508 & ADA WCAG Website Auditing Providers

To ensure that people with disabilities can access your website and its content, and to reduce legal exposure, we offer two levels web accessibility testing and remediation: 1) 360° WCAG Audit or 2) Priority Automated Audit.

 

360° Web Accessibility Audit & Remediation Guide

This package provides the most comprehensive audit, and the most useful reporting for efficient remediation. It's first crucial to understand that automated tools cannot even detect ~70% of WCAG violations. This is because the WCAG is nuanced and interpretive. The only way to be assured that you have captured all WCAG issues is to also test using Manual and Assistive Technology methods.

 

WCAG Auditing Best Practices:

1. Automated Testing

In this process we will use the industry's best automated tools to test every page of the website.  While software is effective in catching low-hanging fruit, software is “dumb” and can only identify approximately 30% of issue types. 

 

2. Manual Testing 

All templates and unique pages are identified and tested, so that systemic errors can be identified and remediation applied across the entire system in an efficient manner. In addition to manual review of code, we use color contrast analyzers, code inspections tools, and MSAA Inspector, which exposes the communication between the application and the Accessibility API layer, which then translates information to the screen readers.

 

3. Assistive Technology Testing 

The third and final step of the testing process. We put ourselves into the position of the disabled individual and navigate through core use-cases. In so doing, we identify the particular pain points that various Assistive technologies (ATs) have within an experience. The ATs used for this testing include JAWS, NVDA, Zoom Text, and Dragon Naturally Speaking.

 

360° WCAG Audit Reporting

The depth and detail in our accessibility audits is what sets us apart. We not only identify where and what each violation is, but we provide the remediation guidance to fix each. 

1. 360° WCAG Accessibilty Audit & Remediation Report 

  • This is the core document that documents all issues. Each issue will be indexed with a reference number and include
  • Issue title
  • Link to page
  • Description of issue
  • Solution guidance (written for relevant developer, website manager, or content authors) - the key value.
  • Screen shots and visual assistance when relevant
  • Severity & Priority 

 

2. 360° WCAG Accessibility Prioritization Report

This spreadsheet breaks down the 360° Audit & Remediation Report and organizes issues by priority. In practice, this is the working document and document of record. It can be segmented as you wish, assign owners, and record status. Should you ever be challenged, this is how you show your efforts toward web accessibility.

The reporting is so clear that its very rare that clients need further assistance. With that said, we are of course on-call for additional WCAG website remediation consulting.

 

Stand-Alone Automated Priority Web Accessibility Audit

Should you not have budget for the full 360° WCAG Audit, then we can provide automated testing using the industry's top software as a phase one. The reporting takes the form of a spreadsheet identifying where each issue is, what each issue is, severity, and automated remediation guidance. We add additional value by assessing priority for each issue.

  

 

WCAG Accessibility Remediation Providers

If you have an existing website development team, our reporting will serve as a valuable guide. We can also provide additional accessibility remediation consulting, or even on-site consulting. 

If you lack such a team, our team of experienced accessible web designers and developers can deliver website remediation and ensure your website is no longer a legal liability and universal access to all visitors.

 

Please call us for a free consultation. 

802 864 8251 or email us. 

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