2023 accessibility guide: How to complete website audits

When you design accessible websites, you remove barriers for disabled people. But to know what you need to improve, you need to know where you are. 

Website audits identify accessibility issues on your pages and provide guidance on how to fix them. In our previous post, we cover why accessibility audits matter. Now let’s look at how to conduct one.

• What is the purpose of your accessibility audit?
• Who will perform the web accessibility audit?
• What to check in a website accessibility audit
  • Check text content for accessibility issues
  • Verify images, videos, and audio content are accessible
  • Ensure interactive tools and transaction items are inclusive
  • Audit website navigation elements for accessibility
  • Include HTML checks in your website audit
• Addressing accessibility issues
• Building web accessibility into development and workplace culture

The goal of any accessibility audit is to uncover and remediate accessibility issues so disabled people can interact with websites or apps without barriers.

Many organizations run audits to check for common accessibility issues and ensure compliance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). Those farther along in their accessibility efforts may conduct web audits to test specific features or functions for certain communities like blind or low-vision customers.

Your objective will determine what type of audit you conduct, who does the testing, and what the audit includes.

You can perform a website audit in-house or outsource it to a specialist or third party. Here are three common options:

An accessibility specialist understands the intricacies of creating accessible websites, apps, and products. Using their expertise, and potentially lived experience as a disabled person, they perform audits and advise tech teams to improve digital accessibility. 

They’re also familiar with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), WCAG, and other guidelines to ensure your organization stays compliant with accessibility regulations.

Hiring an accessibility specialist is one of the best ways to ensure your organization designs digital products and services that disabled people can use without limitations. As an internal employee, they’ll understand your organization, products, and services on a deeper level than a third-party auditor. They can also tailor their testing and recommendations to suit your specific needs. 

If you hire an internal accessibility specialist, make sure they have proper resources and support. If tech teams don’t implement their suggestions, your organization’s accessibility efforts will stall.

A third-party accessibility specialist takes on similar responsibilities to an internal consultant. They perform website audits, identify accessibility issues, and provide recommendations.

You can work with an individual consultant, but third-party specialists may also work in teams. As a result, they can test your website faster than a single in-house specialist. As a trade-off, they won’t understand your organization the way an internal employee would.

If you can’t afford to hire a full-time accessibility specialist but want the knowledge and expertise that only a trained professional can provide, turning to a third party can be a smart choice.

If you don’t have the resources to hire an internal or external accessibility specialist, a third option exists: upskilling. Upskilling gives your tech teams the skills and knowledge they need to build more accessible websites and products. Some of them may even discover a passion for it and decide to become an accessibility specialist full time.

At Pluralsight, we created a website accessibility academy to upskill our developers. Giving tech teams access to accessibility-focused learning paths is also a solid starting point.

These courses can help your technologists build and design accessible websites:

• Developing Websites for Accessibility

• Accessibility: Testing and Screen Reader Use

• Meeting Web Accessibility Guidelines (Section 508/ WCAG 2.1)

• Making a Web Form Accessible

Each organization’s website accessibility audit will look different depending on their goals. 

This is by no means a comprehensive list, but whether you conduct automated or manual testing or work with internal or external specialists, you’ll generally want to test these elements in your audit:

Users should be able to interact with and understand your website even with stylesheets disabled. Information that disappears when you disable CSS poses an accessibility issue.

Some websites and applications use text color to draw the user's attention. For example, red text may indicate that a form field is required. However, cues that rely on text color may not work for blind and low-vision users, and screen readers don’t tell users text color.

Insufficient color contrast between text and backgrounds makes it difficult for blind or low-vision users to read information on a site.

Small text can be hard to read. If you can’t increase the font size, ensure users can use the zoom function to increase the text size on their screen.

Many websites use headings to format pages and chunks of information. Make sure these headings are styled and marked up appropriately so blind and low-vision users can understand the site layout.

Each page on your website should have a descriptive, clearly stated title that explains the purpose of the page. This helps people find what they’re looking for quickly.

Links should be descriptive and explain the destination and/or purpose of the link. 

For example, some users skip from link to link using screen readers, especially if they’re looking for a particular page or piece of information. Linked text like “click here” doesn’t provide any useful information out of context. Linking the phrase “blog article about Global Accessibility Day” provides more information to help users navigate the site.

Video or audio content should have captions and transcripts enabled so the Deaf and hard-of-hearing community can still engage with them.

Video content should include audio descriptions of any images, tables, or graphs so blind and low-vision users can access this information.

Images should include alt text, or alternative text, that describes the image or its purpose for blind or low-vision users.

Use plain text instead of images that contain text. Screen readers can’t parse text in an image. Text in images also becomes blurry when zoomed in, which further inhibits low-vision users from reading it.

Job applications, shopping carts, and many other types of pages contain online forms. Without accessibility, disabled users can’t complete or submit these forms. 

When building online forms, ensure:

• Form elements behave as expected

• Form fields are marked and labeled appropriately  

• Form elements are consistent across your website

• Users get a warning before being timed out

• Clear, helpful error messages are provided when forms are not filled in correctly

• Users can review their answers before submitting a form

• Images, charts, and tables in forms have text descriptions

Disabled people may need to navigate a website using only a keyboard (no mouse), screen reader, or alternate device or assistive technology. Here are some navigation-specific items to include in your audit:

Test the page orientation when using a mobile or tablet device. If you turn the device from portrait to landscape, the page orientation should change to match.

Some motor disabilities prevent disabled people from performing complex motions or gestures (like shaking a device or using two fingers to zoom). Someone should be able to navigate your website using only one finger or a stylus.

Check that someone can navigate your pages without a mouse. Users navigating with keyboard commands won’t see a cursor on the screen, so they need another way to know which element they’re hovering over or selecting.

They also need to be able to navigate your website with the tabbing function (using the Tab key to move between elements). When tabbing, the order should make sense. For example, if a user tabs through a list, they should move through the list from top to bottom. 

Disabled users should also be able to skip directly to the main content on the page without tabbing through every element before it.

Make sure users have multiple options to navigate your website, such as a search bar or site map, in addition to navigation menus.

Ensure users can use and understand your page content if they zoom in, magnify the page, or enlarge the text.

Disabled users need a way to turn off distracting page elements, like flashing animations, sound effects, and pop-ups. Ensure that users can disable these elements, including content that plays automatically.

If your website uses interactive maps, provide alternative options as well, like plain text addresses and directions.

Accessible websites use semantic HTML. In other words, they use “the correct HTML elements for their intended purpose as much as possible.” For example, if you add a paragraph and button to your website, you should use the  <p> and <button> elements.

You’ll also want the audit to check that tables and bulleted lists are marked up properly and the language of the content is specified in the HTML.

After completing an audit, tackling the list of known accessibility issues can feel overwhelming. Create a strategic plan to get started and make the most impact.

For each accessibility issue, consider:

• How difficult will it be to fix this? Which people or teams do we need to involve?

• How long will it take to fix this?

• Does this issue impact essential functionality or services? Or does it impact out-of-date pages?

Answer these questions to prioritize your changes and develop a high-level accessibility roadmap.

Website audits play a critical role in improving digital accessibility. But they’re ultimately a reactive measure.

As your teams build new web pages, products, and services, consider accessibility from the start. When you take a proactive approach, you’ll break down barriers and improve accessibility from end to end.