Understanding the Accessibility Results - Website Auditing Guide #3

Understanding the Accessibility Results

In the previous article of the Website Auditing Guide we explained what the performance results indicate in your Website Audit output. In this article we will be covering how you can understand your Accessibility Results.

Please refer to the first part of the Website Auditing Guide to understand more about the process and tools used to carry out an Audit for a website. In case you would like to understand what the Website Audit Performance results indicate, please refer here.

What is Web Accessibility?

Web Accessibility means that websites, software tools and other software technologies are developed and implemented in a way so that people with disabilities can use them. There are many other benefits for including Web Accessibility for your software. For example, this can also help increase your web ranking as search engines tend to score higher websites with web accessibility in place. Moreover, having web accessibility will allow for a broader audience to navigate and access your website comfortably.

The Score

The Accessibility score can result between 0 and 100. The Accessibility score is important for measuring how effectively potential visitors can access your website.

The Accessibility score is determined by how each accessibility audit is pass or fail. Unlike the Performance audits, a page doesn't get points for partially passing an accessibility audit. For example, if some elements have screenreader-friendly names, but others don't, that page gets a 0 for the screenreader-friendly-names audit.

This is measured based upon how well you have labeled form elements, attributed your images, given buttons and links accessible names and given every page an appropriate title.

Names and Labels

This tab features opportunities for you to improve the semantics of the controls in your application. This may enhance the experience for users and visitors coming onto the website who are making use of assistive technology. For example, using a screen reader will read out the name of the assets and content on the website for visitors with visual impediments.

Additional Items To Manually Check

In this tab are address areas for items which an automated testing tool cannot cover. Therefore, manually check these items to make sure they are optimised for accessibility.

Passed Audits

This is a list of all items on your website which have passed the accessibility test. In here you will find each induvidual item along with a description to what exactly it does for your website. It is important to understand what effectively works for accessibility and which features on your website may yet need improving.

The Law

Making your website conform with Accessibility standards and having it perform very high post Website Audit could also be a legal requirement depending on where you are. Always make sure you understand the legal requirements you must abide by when creating your website, more information can be found on w3.org.

To Summarise

Having good accessibility means that people with disabilities can comfortably and easily navigate their way through your website. Having correctly attributed and labelled assets on your website would mean that someone who has text-to-speech enabled will be able to tell what area of your website they are navigating in. Furthermore, this will allow for smooth navigation for them.

Building accessible websites benefits everyone:

1. Using Semantic HTML which improves accessibility will also help improve your website SEO. This will make your website perform higher in seaarch engine rankings.
2. By improving your website accessibility, it demonstrates good ethics and morals, which improves both your business brand and public image.

We hope that you have understood the importance of implementing accessibility and how you can better understand the Accessibility results of your Website Audit Test.

Please feel free to reach out to [email protected], we can help you explain your website audit scores, perform audit tests and help you find out exactly how your website can be improved.

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