How do you evaluate your design's accessibility?

1 Understand the standards

Before you start testing your design, you need to familiarize yourself with the accessibility standards and guidelines that apply to your context and industry. The most widely used and recognized standards are the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), which provide four principles and 13 guidelines for creating accessible web content. The WCAG also define three levels of conformance: A, AA, and AAA, which indicate the degree of accessibility achieved. Depending on your project's scope and goals, you may need to comply with different levels of WCAG or other standards, such as Section 508, ADA, or AODA.

2 Conduct automated testing

Automated testing is a quick and easy way to check your design for common accessibility issues, such as color contrast, keyboard navigation, alt text, and code quality. There are many tools and plugins that can scan your design and generate reports and recommendations for improving accessibility. Some examples are WAVE, axe, Lighthouse, and Accessibility Insights. However, automated testing cannot catch all accessibility problems, especially those that require human judgment or interaction. Therefore, you should not rely solely on automated testing and always supplement it with manual testing.

3 Conduct manual testing

Manual testing involves inspecting and interacting with your design using different devices, browsers, settings, and assistive technologies. This can help you discover accessibility issues that automated testing may miss, such as logical order, focus management, readability, and usability. You can use various techniques and tools to conduct manual testing, such as keyboard testing, screen reader testing, zoom testing, color blindness simulation, and cognitive load testing. You can also use checklists and heuristics to guide your manual testing and ensure you cover all aspects of accessibility.

4 Conduct user testing

User testing is the most effective way to evaluate your design's accessibility from the perspective of real users with diverse abilities, needs, and preferences. User testing can help you validate your assumptions, identify user pain points, and gather feedback and suggestions for improving accessibility. You can conduct user testing in different ways, such as remote or in-person, moderated or unmoderated, qualitative or quantitative, or formative or summative. The key is to recruit a representative sample of users with different accessibility needs and scenarios, and to use appropriate tasks, metrics, and methods to measure their performance and satisfaction.

5 Analyze and prioritize the results

After conducting your accessibility evaluation, you need to analyze and prioritize the results to determine the severity and impact of the issues you found. You can use various frameworks and criteria to prioritize the issues, such as POUR (Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, Robust), RICE (Reach, Impact, Confidence, Effort), or WCAG levels. You should also consider the user feedback and suggestions, and the business and technical constraints. Based on your analysis and prioritization, you can create a list of action items and recommendations for improving your design's accessibility.

6 Iterate and retest

Accessibility evaluation is not a one-time activity, but a continuous process that requires iteration and retesting. As you implement the changes and improvements based on your evaluation results, you need to retest your design to ensure you have resolved the issues and not introduced new ones. You also need to retest your design whenever you make significant updates or modifications, or when new standards or technologies emerge. By iterating and retesting your design, you can ensure you maintain and enhance your design's accessibility over time.

7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?