Web Accessibility Assessments test if your website is accessible for people with disabilities. To measure compliance a website is compared to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). If it passes everything it will be accessible to people with a wide range of abilities. An assessment by a professional is the most effective way to determine compliance.
Duke's Web Accessibility Guidelines require sites to be in conformance with WCAG before they launch. Getting an assessment from a professional is the only way to ensure the website passes all the requirements.
An assessment is not just a list of problems. It contains suggestions on how to fix issues. We have seen it all. If issues exist we already have documentation on how to remediate the issue and even code snippets to paste in.
If you need a web accessibility assessment, email us at web-accessibility@duke.edu. They are free to websites affiliated with Duke. Any new or significantly modified Duke site must be WCAG 2.0+ AA complaint before launch.
Assessments require both automated and manual checks
There are automated tools like WAVE that help evaluate some of the criteria. But automated tools only catch about 40% of the errors on a site. Automated tests can only help check for definitive pass-fail criteria. Examples include:
- Do the images have alt tags?
- Do the form fields have labels?
- Does the text have enough contrast?
The remaining 60% requires a human to test. Examples of human tests include:
- Does the website work for keyboard-only users?
- Does a video have accurate captions?
- Is it navigable by screen reader users?
Our assessments document both types of issues and provide suggestions on how to fix them.