Factors that influence priority
In order to do the most good for both Duke and the visitors of the website, it is important to prioritize your web accessibility goals by using your organization’s development resources efficiently.
To provide maximum impact we recommend focusing on high priority issues.
• Impact on Site Visitors with Disabilities
• Blockers to accessing content
• High volume of repeat issues
• High traffic parts of the site
Impact on Site Visitors with Disabilities
A primary goal is to make websites more accessible to people with disabilities so these issues should take first priority. Conversely, it may make sense to delay the repair of things that will have a lower impact to the end user.
Determining impact:
- High Impact - People with a sensory impairment will be unable to perform a required task or unable to understand the important content.
- Medium Impact - Users will be able to perform an important required task or able to understand important content, but with some difficulty if this item is left unrepaired.
- Low Impact - Users will be inconvenienced by leaving this item unrepaired but will be able to accomplish all tasks.
Example: High impact could be a "Get Help" or "Contact" form. The user may have been using the form to acquire assistance because of a web accessibility issue on the site. If the form is inaccessible the user could be deprived of access to content as well as asking for help.
Simple fixes or "low-hanging fruit"
These are items that can be fixed with minimal effort but provide value as quick improvements.
Example: Adding alt text to images. Usually, there are no blockers to starting this process.
Blockers to accessing content
The inability to access web content is a top priority that needs to be corrected immediately.
Example: A menu or submenu that is not accessible by keyboard-only users and screen readers.
Volume of Repeat Issues
Some issues are pervasive through the entire site, like header, navigation, and footer.
Example: Color contrast issues are usually a repeat issue. Changing a line or two of CSS could potentially fix hundreds or even thousands of violations.
High-traffic areas
Google Analytics can provide site traffic data to identify high-traffic pages and may help focus web accessibility efforts for maximum impact.
Example: On some sites the homepage accounts for 80% of traffic. Fixing issues on this page will have the most impact on reducing the quantity of barriers that users may experiance.
A general guide:
Deal with complaints first. Other items can often be done in tandem because the resource to fix each issue may be different. Content creators can add alt tags while a developer fixes the navigation, while the designer fixes color contrast issues.
- Complaints
- Navigation
- Repeditive issues that manafest on every page like issues that repeat on every page (includes navigation)
- Text alternative to visual media like alt tags on images and captions for video
- Color contrast