Step-by-Step Guide: Improving Your Site’s WCAG Compliance With a Simple Tool
Making your website accessible to people with disabilities should not be an intimidating task. By using the appropriate website accessibility tool, you can efficiently pinpoint the problems, comprehend what is required to be fixed, and get closer to WCAG 2.2 standards.
Accessibility is a very important aspect of users’ experience today as they demand fast, usable, and barrier-free experiences. Research has been done that shows more than 1 billion people in the world have some sort of disability, and therefore access should not be considered as an option, rather it should be seen as a requirement of good user experience and overall website performance.
Why WCAG Compliance Matters
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) represent a set of requirements that your website should meet in order to be usable by persons with disabilities of different kinds: visual, auditory, cognitive, and motor. Ablating your website to comply with these standards may have a positive effect on the organization of your site, the clarity of your text, the ease of navigation, and the compatibility of the site with the technologies that assist peoples with disabilities.
However, compliance is not only good for users; it has also great benefits for the site owners in terms of SEO, brand loyalty, and lowering the chances of getting into legal trouble.
Start With a Reliable Website Accessibility Tool
A great way to start the process of compliance is to check your site with an online accessibility tool like the Accessibility Analyzer Chrome Extension. Such tools provide you with the most up-to-date and accurate information regarding your site's accessibility. They show the mistakes that have been made, suggest which attributes are missing, and indicate which parts of the code might be non-functional.
Many developers and designers choose web accessibility testing tools as their instruments of work because the tools give them results in a matter of seconds, are easy to use, and yield output in the form of automatic reports, which they can then use for hours of manual work.
Scan Your Webpage and Review the Results
After you have the Chrome Extension on your device, you should open the website you want to check and then choose to perform the scan. The tool evaluates your website based on the WCAG 2.2 standards and brings together all the problems it has found into the Developer Tools panel. By using this device one is able to see at a glance which items like missing alt text, color contrast, keyboard traps, form labels, and ARIA issues are affected without physically looking for them.
This step allows you to understand thoroughly the condition of your site. Though automated tools have their limitations and cannot identify each and every issue, they, nevertheless, provide a very good base from which one can begin to explore the most frequently encountered accessibility barriers.
Understand the Recommendations
Every flagged item has a detailed explanation and a basic recommendation. This simplifies the problem of fixing issues immensely, especially if you are not very knowledgeable about the accessibility guidelines. By implementing these proposals, you can gradually bring your work into compliance without needing to have expert-level knowledge.
Download and Use the Excel Report
The most valuable feature of the Chrome Extension to facilitate accessibility is the option to download the full accessibility report in an Excel (.xls) file format. It is a very convenient way to share the results with your team, record your progress, and plan the corrections in a neat manner. A well-organized report also works as a tool to support EEAT by providing clear evidence and openness about your accessibility process.
Combine Automated and Manual Testing
Even though the website accessibility tool delivers dependable automated results, doing manual checks along with it will assure not only that your site is fully compliant with the regulations but also that it is user-friendly. Manual testing allows you to confirm keyboard navigation, content readability, and usability in the real world, which the tools cannot fully assess.
Enhancing WCAG compliance is much easier if you have the proper tools and follow a consistent process. Get the Accessibility Analyzer Chrome Extension, perform your audits, and then you can start making substantive changes that will result in a more inclusive and accessible website that anyone can use.
