Understanding the Components of a Digital Accessibility Audit

Creating an accessible environment is not just a legal requirement; it’s a moral responsibility and a business imperative. Whether you’re developing a website, app, or any other digital product, ensuring accessibility means providing equal access to all users, regardless of their abilities. A digital accessibility audit is a crucial step toward this goal, helping you identify and fix barriers that prevent people with disabilities from using your product effectively.

In this blog post, we’ll break down what a digital accessibility audit consists of and why it’s important.

A digital accessibility audit is a comprehensive review of your website, app, or digital platform to assess how well it meets accessibility standards. It typically focuses on ensuring compliance with guidelines like the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), or other regional standards. The goal is to identify any areas where users with disabilities may encounter difficulties and to provide actionable recommendations for improving accessibility.

1. Inclusivity: By ensuring your digital product is accessible, you make it usable for a wider audience, including people with disabilities.
2. Compliance: Many countries have laws requiring digital platforms to meet specific accessibility standards. Failure to comply can result in legal penalties.
3. User Experience: Improving accessibility often leads to a better overall user experience for everyone, not just users with disabilities.
4. SEO Benefits: Accessible websites often rank better on search engines because accessibility improvements (such as proper heading structures and alt text for images) align with SEO best practices.

An accessibility audit evaluates various components of your digital product, focusing on how users with different disabilities (visual, auditory, motor, and cognitive) can interact with it. Here are the main components of the audit:

• Text Alternatives: Ensuring images, videos, and other non-text content have appropriate alt text or transcripts. Most websites do already have alt text, as it is an important part of SEO. The issue is they are not descriptive to what the image is. This is important because anyone that is blind and using a screen reader will need to know what the image is about. 
• Color Contrast: Checking that text is readable with sufficient contrast against the background. Majority of people don’t think about the color contrast when building a website, and to them a lighter color with white text on it will look fine. Unfortunately, people with low vision or color blindness will not be able to read it that well. Thankfully, there are a bunch of tools out there that help us to figure out if the color contrast is correct.
• Scalable Text: Verifying that text can be resized without breaking the layout or losing functionality. This means that you are able to zoom in without having to scroll left and right and everything is still in the same order. 
• Multimedia Accessibility: Assessing whether videos have captions and audio descriptions for people with hearing or vision impairments.

• Keyboard Navigation: Ensuring that the site is fully navigable using only a keyboard, without requiring a mouse. This includes adding a “Skip to Content” link before the navigation, so anyone using a screen reader don’t have to listen to the navigation menu in every page they go to. 
• Focus Indicators: Verifying that focus states (outlines or highlights) are clear for keyboard users to see where they are on the page. Most browsers have an option to turn on focus indicators, but you should also have one specifically for your website as well. Just in case the web browser does not include focus indicators. 
• Time Limits: Checking for any time-based interactions and ensuring users can extend or remove time limits if necessary.

• Clear and Simple Language: Evaluating whether the language used is simple and understandable to all users.
• Error Messages: Ensuring that error messages are clear and provide guidance on how to fix mistakes. One example of this is on forms. Just using color to indicate an error will not help for anyone that is colorblind. Even just using an asterisk (*) might not work for everyone. Making sure that the error has a clear message explaining the error will help tremendously.
• Consistent Navigation: Checking for consistent navigation and layouts across the platform, which makes it easier for users to learn and understand.

• Screen Reader Compatibility: Making sure that the platform works well with assistive technologies like screen readers. As I go through each page, I utilize a screen reader to make sure everything makes sense and is reading in order. 
• Semantic HTML: Using proper HTML structure (headings, labels, lists, etc.) so that assistive technologies can interpret the content accurately. This is important because screen readers have the ability to skip to each type of heading, paragraphs, and lists. 
• ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications): Implementing ARIA roles and properties to enhance accessibility, particularly for complex web applications.

A digital accessibility audit is an essential process to ensure that your website or digital platform is usable by everyone, including people with disabilities. By performing regular audits, you not only stay compliant with legal requirements but also provide a better user experience for all. Whether you’re running a small blog or a large e-commerce site, an investment in accessibility is an investment in inclusivity, user satisfaction, and long-term success.

Need help with your digital accessibility audit? Give us a call today for a quote!