Why do an accessibility audit?

Auditing your website will identify issues that prevent users from accessing your content.  

It helps you to understand how users interact with your website, and what you can do to improve the user experience.

We can help, whether you are creating a new website or want to baseline the accessibility of your current site.

Digital accessibility and a good user experience are the same thing

Making your digital channels accessible is beneficial in three ways:

• Opens up your site to all your target audiences

• Helps your audiences to find you (important for search engines, particularly Google)

• Increases customer satisfaction, which is good for business.

There is also a commercial, legal and moral imperative to make digital products and services more inclusive. 

• Nearly 14m people in the UK are registered disabled. Others experience temporary or situational access barriers. That’s a missed commercial opportunity.  

• Public sector bodies must make their websites and apps accessible and publish an accessibility statement on their site. 

• There is no legal requirement for other organisations to do the same. We believe there is an ethical responsibility for all organisations to make their digital channels accessible to everyone. 

It’s the right thing to do. It builds trust, enhances credibility and shows a commitment to inclusivity. 

Collaborative approach

To give you the most cost-effective solution we agree together in advance the areas that need testing. We use a combination of focused manual inspection and whole site automated testing to gain a full picture of your site’s accessibility issues. We run tests that simulate interactions with your pages by users with a variety of accessibility needs.

Audit methodology

• Each page reviewed against Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 (WCAG) standards.

• Testing to all 3 levels of conformance: A/AA/AAA

• Assistive technology testing with e.g., screen readers to establish whether different users with disabilities can view and interact with page content.

• In-browser tools assess criteria such as colour contrast, heading structure and use of alternative text.

• Manual inspection of HTML to ensure correct markup has been used.

• We ensure page elements reflow appropriately when browser zoom is activated.

• Review copy to ensure it is clear and appropriately formatted (considering the needs of people with learning difficulties and cognitive impairment).

Audit report & Accessibility statement

Post-audit, we provide you with an in-depth report that includes:

• Executive summary of key issues found.

• A detailed breakdown of all issues ranked by severity - defined as high, medium and low priority.

• List of areas that do not meet Section 508, ADA, WCAG 2.1 AA guidelines.

• A prioritised action plan with specific recommendations to fix the issues and improve accessibility.

• Accessibility statement for your website.

• A one-hour follow-up call to discuss effective ways of implementing the findings in the report.

Pilao Labs offers an SEO service and an Content Strategy service. We recommend you incorporate all three services to fully optimize your website.