A Comprehensive WCAG Testing Strategy for 2024
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To test your content for accessibility, you’ll need to use the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), which includes key guidelines that enhance the user experience for individuals with disabilities. Here’s how to develop a WCAG testing strategy in 2024.
Originally Posted on May 1, 2023
An accessible website is a necessity in today’s digital age. All content creators — from developers and designers to copywriters and product managers — have the responsibility to create digital environments that work for all users, especially those with disabilities.
To determine if your website is accessible for people with disabilities, you need to test it against objective standards — generally, that means following the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).
If you’re testing your website or other digital content for WCAG conformance, you’re on the right track. However, you also need an appropriate testing strategy and a comprehensive process for remediation. Below, we’ll discuss how to get started, which accessibility standards you need to include on your website, and tools to help you.
Understand WCAG Testing
WCAG testing, as the name suggests, involves testing your digital content to ensure it meets the criteria included in the WCAG guidelines. Doing so helps you determine whether or not your content is accessible to people with disabilities. Typically, WCAG testing covers aspects like readability, navigation, and multimedia accessibility.
WCAG testing benefits several groups, including:
- People with disabilities: Conducting WCAG testing ensures your digital content can be used by users with various disabilities, including auditory, visual, cognitive, and mobility, enabling them to navigate and interact with digital content more easily.
- Businesses and organizations: WCAG gives businesses a standard of accessibility to measure against to ensure their digital content conforms to WCAG standards. This standard helps increase the reach of digital content and ensures it complies with accessibility laws like the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) or the European Accessibility Act (EAA). Plus, it can help businesses increase their brand value.
- Society: The more accessible digital content is, the more it can be used by all. Fostering inclusivity in online spaces enables everyone to participate equally in the digital world regardless of ability.
Understand WCAG Testing Guidelines: WCAG 2.0, 2.1, and 2.2
Published by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), WCAG is the de facto international standard for digital accessibility. Websites that follow the latest guidelines are generally considered accessible for most users.
That’s not just our opinion. The Department of Justice (DOJ) recommends testing content against WCAG to improve compliance with the ADA — and a number of international accessibility laws use WCAG as a framework.
To ensure you comply with accessibility laws, you need to understand how WCAG is set up.
WCAG has a few different versions, each of which builds on the previous version to further enhance accessibility. WCAG 2.0 was published in 2008 and included 12 success criteria. WCAG 2.1 expanded on this version, adding 17 additional success criteria in 2018 that addressed mobile accessibility and enhanced accessibility for individuals with cognitive and learning disabilities, among others. Finally, WCAG 2.2 was released in 2023 and added nine additional success criteria to address emerging accessibility challenges.
Principles of Accessible Design
The WCAG guidelines are built on four core principles, known as the POUR principles:
- Perceivable: All user interface components (including interactive links, buttons, text boxes, etc.) should be presented in a way that users can perceive and understand. More simply, if any part of a website’s content is completely invisible to any user, it’s not perceivable.
- Operable: Websites are considered operable if all users can interact with the interface and navigate content. Any interactive elements should be usable by all users.
- Understandable: Users should be able to access digital content, understand how to use it, and comprehend the information presented. It fails the understandability test if someone cannot figure out how to use a website or understand what the information means.
- Robust: Finally, digital content must be robust enough for a wide range of user agents, including standard web browsers and assistive technologies, to interpret them.
Each of these principles helps to guide WCAG testing and ensure digital content works for all users, especially those with disabilities.
Common WCAG Failures
Before beginning a comprehensive accessibility audit, it’s important to understand some of the most common WCAG failures and how they could affect your users:
- Low-contrast text: WCAG requires foreground elements (including text and interactive controls) to meet specific color contrast ratios, which ensures these elements are understandable for people with visual impairments, such as low vision or color blindness.
- Missing image alternative text: Image alternative text (also known as alt text) describes the purpose and function of an image. It’s helpful for people who use screen readers or other assistive technologies.
- Poor keyboard accessibility: Many people use a keyboard (without a mouse) to browse the internet. If users can’t operate your website with a keyboard alone, you’re providing a frustrating user experience for these users.
- Empty hyperlink text: Hyperlink text (or link text) describes what will happen when a user activates a link. Without descriptive text, users won’t know what to expect.
Take a look at your digital content and see if it fails these checkpoints. Once you’ve checked for common WCAG failures and tried to understand the logic behind WCAG, you’re in a great position to carry out a more thorough accessibility audit.
Set a Goal for WCAG Conformance
One important thing to note about WCAG testing: the W3C does not test content for WCAG conformance. WCAG is a voluntary standard, meaning it’s up to organizations to form their own testing strategies.
The first step to creating a WCAG testing strategy: determining which level of WCAG conformance you want to meet.
WCAG has three levels of conformance:
- Level A: Contains the most essential success criteria (pass-or-fail statements used to test content for accessibility) and is considered the minimum level of accessibility.
- Level AA: This is considered the basic level of accessibility as it removes most of the accessibility barriers that hinder the user experience.
- Level AAA: Contains the most strict success criteria, along with all the requirements from previous levels, and is considered the highest level of accessibility.
Organizations should aim to conform with the accessibility standards included in WCAG 2.1 Level AA as this is the level accessibility laws like the ADA, EAA, and others enforce. You can still test content against the Level AAA success criteria — and, by doing so, find more opportunities to deliver an accessible experience for all users — but some types of web content may be unable to conform with all Level AAA criteria. Level AA conformance is considered to be a realistic, achievable goal.
Choose a Testing Tool for Web Accessibility
When choosing a web accessibility testing tool, first consider your project's specific needs and the types of content you’ll be evaluating. Then, start by identifying the key features or tools you’ll need, such as automated checks for WCAG conformance, reporting capabilities, development environments, or support for multiple devices like screen readers. Be sure the platform you’re considering offers a user-friendly interface that integrates with your existing technology stack to minimize disruptions.
Next, you’ll want to consider the balance between automated and manual testing:
Automated Accessibility Checks
Automated accessibility checks automatically scan your digital content for common accessibility errors, such as missing alt text, poor color contrast, or misused headers. Some platforms, such as AudioEye, can even resolve these issues automatically, streamlining your path to accessibility. However, a drawback to automated accessibility testing is that it can only identify common accessibility errors. More complex issues (such as screen reader compatibility or keyboard navigation) are not detectable by software, meaning you could be leaving serious accessibility issues unresolved and delivering a frustrating user experience.
Manual Accessibility Checks
To identify more complex accessibility issues, you’ll need to conduct a manual accessibility check. This involves manually reviewing all of your content against WCAG guidelines. While the approach does allow you to find and fix more complex accessibility issues, it’s a time-consuming and resource-intensive process. (According to our calculations, it would take 167 billion hours to manually fix every accessibility issue on the internet.) Additionally, if you don’t have significant experience with WCAG, you run the risk of missing barriers that could impact your users.
Hybrid Accessibility Testing
A better method is to Use a combination of automated tests and human expertise to test your content. This is known as a hybrid approach to accessibility and is recommended by the W3C. A hybrid approach allows you to combine the speed of automated checks with the thoroughness of manual testing. For example, starting your WCAG testing with an automated audit and supplementing the results with manual testing can help you identify more accessibility issues across your site and resolve them.
Meeting Your Web Accessibility Goals with AudioEye
Here’s the good news: WCAG conformance is achievable. All you need is:
- A combination of manual and automated methods to test your content.
- Testing across all your web content, including PDFs and other web-delivered documents.
- Regular testing of your content.
- An ongoing plan or strategy for finding and fixing accessibility issues that violate WCAG 2.1 Level AA success criteria.
The better news: You can achieve WCAG conformance with ease using AudioEye. Our Accessibility Platform is capable of detecting common accessibility issues and automatically fixing them. We supplement our automated testing via our team of experts who carefully audit your digital content for more complex accessibility issues and provide expert guidance on how to resolve them. With our hybrid approach, not only are you set on the best path to sustained WCAG conformance, but you’re also able to deliver more inclusive browsing experiences.
Want to see where your digital content stands today? Enter the URL of your content below to get a free accessibility scan.
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