Website Accessibility Standards: How to Collaborate and Make Sure Everyone Can Use Your Website

With more than 1 billion people worldwide living with a disability (according to the World Health Organization), implementing website accessibility standards helps you reach this huge audience and create an online environment where everyone can participate and enjoy the experience comfortably and easily.

It’s worth noting that website accessibility is not just an issue for people with disabilities. It matters to all of your users.

However, to truly achieve this goal, collaboration with stakeholders is essential.

In this article, we’ll explore website accessibility standards and how to work effectively with the relevant partners, so that everyone can access and use your website as easily and comfortably as possible.

What Are the 3 Website Accessibility Standards?

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are the most widely recognized set of website accessibility standards. Other guidelines exist for authoring tools (ATAG) and user agents (UAAG), but WCAG is the one primarily used to make website content accessible.

What Are the Core Principles of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)?

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) rest on four core principles, commonly remembered by the acronym POUR: Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and Robust. These principles are not only the foundation for building websites that everyone can access, but also the key to creating an excellent online experience that connects with every type of user, regardless of their abilities.

• Perceivable: Information and user interface components must be presented in ways that users can perceive.
• Operable: User interface components and navigation must be operable.
• Understandable: Information and the operation of the user interface must be understandable.
• Robust: Content must be robust enough that assistive technologies can interpret it reliably.

Website Accessibility Standards

Content

• Use clear, concise language: Avoid technical jargon and complex sentence structures. Aim for a writing style that is easy to understand for users with a wide range of reading abilities.
• Structure your content: Use headings and subheadings. Headings work like road signs. They guide users through your content and help them find information easily.
• Provide descriptive alternative text (alt text) for all images: Alt text tells screen readers what an image is about. This lets users who are blind or have low vision understand the context of the image.
• Use semantic HTML when structuring your content: Semantic HTML elements such as headings (<h1>, <h2>, etc.), paragraphs (<p>) and lists (<ul>, <ol>) convey meaning beyond visual presentation. This helps screen readers interpret your content accurately and makes for a more accessible user experience.

Design

• Ensure sufficient color contrast between text and background elements: Low contrast can make text hard to read, especially for users with visual impairments. That’s why it’s best to use online tools such as the WebAIM Contrast Checker or Stark to check your color contrast ratios. When using these tools, aim for a ratio of at least 4.5:1 for regular text and 3:1 for large or bold text.
• Choose clear, readable fonts: Avoid overly decorative or script fonts, because they are hard to read, especially for users with dyslexia or poor vision. Choose simple sans-serif fonts that stay readable at a variety of sizes.
• Make interactive elements like buttons and links easy to recognize: Use clear labels, distinct visual cues (such as hover effects) and appropriate sizing so users can easily understand and interact with these elements.

Functionality

• Ensure keyboard navigation is possible for all elements on your website: This lets users who navigate with a keyboard, such as people with motor impairments or those who use screen readers, access all interactive elements, including links, buttons and forms.
• Provide transcripts and captions for audio and video content: This allows users who are deaf or hard of hearing, or who simply prefer text-based information, to access the content and understand its message.
• Use descriptive labels for forms and input fields: Labels should clearly explain what information is needed in each field. This helps users fill out forms more accurately.

Testing

• Regularly test your website with assistive technologies and real users to identify and resolve accessibility issues.

Compliance

• Understand and apply relevant accessibility standards such as WCAG to build a solid foundation for an accessible website.

Mobile Accessibility

• Optimize your website for mobile devices, since some users may access your website from their mobile phones. Optimizing for mobile accessibility includes making sure touch targets are large enough, using appropriate text sizes, and avoiding content that requires precise gestures.

Note: All of the website accessibility standards above are not just relevant to your in-house team when building a website. It’s a great idea to share them with your QA and other testing teams, as well as clients, reviewers and so on, so they know what to look for and check.

How to Test and Validate Website Accessibility

Verifying your website’s accessibility is essential to ensure an inclusive user experience for everyone. Here is a breakdown of the main testing and validation methods:

Testing with Assistive Technologies

Testing with assistive technologies involves using tools such as screen readers, screen magnifiers and voice control software to experience your website from the perspective of users with disabilities.

This hands-on approach helps identify accessibility barriers that traditional testing methods may miss, including keyboard navigation, missing alternative text for images, unclear screen reader output, and compatibility issues with assistive technologies.

Testing with Users (Including People with Disabilities)

User testing with real users (including people with disabilities) goes beyond technical checks and provides real-world insight into how users with different types of disabilities experience your website. Watching users navigate your website and gathering their feedback can reveal usability challenges and areas for improvement that you might not have anticipated.

Accessibility Testing Tools

Automated accessibility testing tools can scan your website’s code and identify common accessibility issues such as missing alternative text, insufficient color contrast errors and broken keyboard navigation.

This saves time and resources by automatically flagging potential accessibility problems. Some of these tools include Deque’s Axe, Lighthouse (from Google) and AVE (WebAIM Wave).

Validating WCAG Compliance

Validating WCAG compliance involves checking your website against these guidelines to verify its level of accessibility. WCAG compliance demonstrates your commitment to accessibility standards and lets you assess your website’s accessibility against established benchmarks.

You can outsource this work to organizations that provide WCAG conformance testing services, or you can use self-assessment tools to evaluate your website’s conformance.

How to Build a Collaborative Process for Website Accessibility

Appoint an Accessibility Champion

Appoint an Accessibility Champion, someone who can lead the collaborative effort, run training sessions, and serve as a central resource for other stakeholders looking for guidance on accessibility standards.

This dedicated champion can make sure accessibility stays a top priority throughout the website development process.

Set Clear Goals and Timelines for Improving Accessibility

Establish clear goals and realistic timelines, taking the needs of all stakeholders into account. Setting measurable accessibility goals and mapping out implementation timelines ensures consistent progress toward a more accessible website.

Identify the Stakeholders Involved in Creating and Maintaining the Website

Identify all of these key participants, and foster collaboration and communication among the stakeholders. Some important team members to consider include developers, designers, content creators, project managers, QA testers, SMEs (subject matter experts), clients, marketing and SEO teams, users, and more.

Define Each Stakeholder’s Roles and Responsibilities in Ensuring Accessibility

A successful collaborative approach requires assigning clear roles and responsibilities to every stakeholder involved in making the website accessible. By defining these roles and responsibilities clearly, you can make sure everyone on the team understands their part in creating an accessible website. This fosters accountability and empowers each stakeholder to contribute their expertise toward the shared goal of building a website that is inclusive for everyone.

Establish Ongoing Training and Awareness Programs

Hold training sessions and encourage stakeholders to take part in these courses. The training can cover the latest accessibility guidelines (WCAG), standards for different aspects of web development (coding, design, content creation), and how to use assistive technologies for testing purposes.

Establish an Accessibility Testing Process

Define a clear process for testing accessibility regularly. This process can include a combination of automated testing tools, manual testing with assistive technologies, and user testing with people with disabilities. This multi-method approach helps uncover a wide range of accessibility issues.

Create a Feedback Loop with Users

Create a feedback loop and encourage users to report the accessibility barriers they run into on your website. This valuable feedback helps identify issues missed during testing.

Some steps to take include offering multiple channels for reporting, such as feedback forms, email or social media.

Use Visual Review and Feedback Tools That Let Everyone Collaborate in One Place

While a close collaborative approach is essential, there are also technology solutions that can streamline accessibility testing efforts and improve communication among team members.

You may already have accessibility testing tools that you use with your in-house team members. But how do you collaborate with clients, SMEs (subject matter experts) and users, all in one place?

You need a centralized QA review and design feedback tool to do that. Some of these tools, like zipBoard, integrate easily with your testing tools and make sure everyone can review the live website, spot issues and give feedback right on the platform. On the other side, you can also review that feedback, prioritize it and assign fixes in the same place.

Monitor and Update Accessibility Compliance

Allow QA testers to test the website regularly to ensure compliance with evolving accessibility standards. That way, developers can fix the identified issues to maintain a website that is inclusive for everyone.

Next Steps

Start making your website accessible today! Even small changes can make a big difference.

While you’re at it, if you need a collaboration hub for both internal and external stakeholders in one place, plus a way to track issues and manage work, turn to The7’s marketing services. We’d be happy to advise you!