How Do You Conduct An Accessibility Audit?

You are probably reading this post because your business has a digital presence and you are worried about being vulnerable to legal recourse and penalties. Due to the rising number of lawsuits, “website accessibility” has become a hot topic for all sizes of businesses. The public consciousness for ada compliance 508 is indeed increasing at a greater pace, unfortunately, the website development practices are far away from achieving the desired level of accessibility. Designing a website while keeping the accessibility challenges in mind is crucial to not only ensuring sufficient access to your website, but minimizing your exposure for a lawsuit. However, when you fail to address the accessibility questions at the time of web development, you end up searching for ways to damage control and can be faced with paying steep fines and legal fees.

Recognizing the importance of ADA laws is one thing and actually moving forward on the accessibility journey is quite another. The challenging path to accessibility starts with ADA compliance audit. It is the process of thoroughly studying your website code to identify and rectify the accessibility issues. Most people think that achieving accessibility is daunting, expensive and time consuming, however, not every audit has to be costly or extensive. Depending on the level of accessibility you aim for, the level of testing can also be fine-tuned. Let’s discuss, how to make your websites ADA compliant:

What are accessibility audits?

Accessibility specialists inspect your business website to make it accessible for those with disabilities. The most useful tool for ADA testing are the WCAG 2.1 guidelines. The suggestions and standards discussed in these guidelines are useful to develop or modify the website codes and make them accessible for users dealing with common disabilities like visual impairment, hearing disability, cognitive disability and photosensitivity.

Auditing specialists can make an accessibility checklist suitable for your business and tailored to your specific industry. Based on the requirements, you can aim for any of the three levels of success criteria. Auditors encourage you to pick the most suitable level from the most relevant version of WCAG.

There are 12 guidelines involving the 4 principles that can be attained through A, AA or AAA level success criteria. The current versions of accessible guidelines are WCAG 2.0, 2.1, and 2.2. To make the audits comprehensive, expert guidance is suggested. This way you can aim for the relevant success criteria without feeling overwhelmed.

How long does it take to conduct the accessibility audit?

Website Accessibility Tool audits are divided into two types of specialty tasks, i.e. identifying the problem and remediation. The average time it will take to complete the audit depends on the size of the auditing team and their technical proficiency. If they are backed with a skilful testing team that can quickly remediate the accessibility issues then average level audits can be conducted anywhere between eight to twelve hours per page. The estimated audit time is subjective to so many criteria, so it’s best to talk to the experts.

What is the cost of accessibility audits?

It is difficult to give a ballpark figure for accessibility audits. The total cost of your conformance to WCAG guidelines depends on the amount of damage control you need to take care of and is dictated by the volume of unique pages on your website that must be audited. Only the experts can give you the proper estimate for auditing the website and remediation.

Where to find the accessibility specialists?

Website accessible ADA standards are not at all expensive. Make sure to address the accessibility issue with a team of genuine and certified audit specialists. They can guide you on the best path to recovery. To learn more about the audit process and cost, visit the link given below.