A good manual accessibility audit starts with the right scope, and, in most cases, the scoping should be complete and agreed on before contracts are signed.

It is not possible, efficient, or cost-effective to manually audit every page of a website or application; therefore, once the target of the audit is identified, a careful representative sample of screens is chosen. The sample considers the critical user flows and the tools, techniques, and content types used on the website or application.

Effective Scoping follows the first 3 steps of the WCAG-EM.

1. Define the scope of the evaluation – defining what is included in the evaluation; the goal of the evaluation; and the WCAG conformance level (A, AA, AAA).
2. Explore the website – identifying key web pages; key functionality; types of web content, designs, functionality, etc.; required web technologies.
3. Select a representative sample – guidance on structured and randomly selected web pages when it is not feasible to evaluate every web page on a website.

A note on step 1: Define the scope of the evaluation: This is an important strategic step. Much of the time, the scope of the evaluation should represent the entire webpage or application; however, there are many cases where this is not possible or strategically sound. Expert consulting will help you understand what’s best in your situation.

Technical conformance audits uncover areas that don’t meet the guideline (ie. The WCAG 2.2 level AA guidelines). Evaluators must be experts in both the guidelines and assistive technologies used by people with disabilities. People with disabilities are important for polished usability advice.

Evaluations are performed with a mix of automated tools and manual inspection. Moreover, the automated tool results need to be validated through manual inspection. Manual inspection is further used to find issues that automation cannot detect. Assistive technologies and methods of inspections include:

• Screen readers such as:
  • Non-Visual Desktop Access (NVDA) (Windows)
  • JAWS (Windows)
  • VoiceOver (iOS)
  • TalkBack (Android)
• Zooming Technology
• Keyboard only access
• Accessing without sound
• Manual code inspection

Reporting issues creates understanding and benchmarks the accessibility of the website or application. However, effective remediation and prioritization advice are what make the reporting actionable and functional. Each issue reported has:

• Mapping to WCAG Success Criteria
• Detailed and actionable remediation advice, including code snippet examples.
• Prioritization Metrics:
  • Issue severity
  • Remediation complexity
  • User group affected

There is a direct correlation between successful remediation and utilizing support options. Expert technical consulting is made available through your organization’s preferred communication system. This allows easy access to our experts during remediation.

Strategic consultants work with your teams to prioritize the remediation and identify and prioritize the process areas in the organization contributing the most to accessibility issues.

• Other ongoing support options include:
• Shift left guidance
• Education and Training
• Monitoring and dev ops tooling and consulting
• Strategic capability maturity