#web accessibility checklist

[aodawebcheck]

Test Website Accessibility To Help People with Disabilities

The Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act web accessibility deadline is quickly approaching. After the 1st of January 2021, non-compliant companies will face legal suits, hefty fines, and possible negative publicity, which is bad for business. Web accessibility is ensuring that all, including those living with a disability, can access and navigate through your website using different devices with ease.

AODA law requires that websites at least meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 Level AA standard before the deadline.  Below is a test website accessibility checklist you can use to ensure your website is AODA compliant.

Alternatives

Ensure you provide text alternatives for images, videos, and other forms of non-text content on your website. Under every video and audio only content should be a clear guide link to corresponding text transcription. It is also important to include closed captions for all videos on your website.

Presentation

Structure your content in a clear and perceivable way by using clear heading tags, appropriate HTML for the ordered and unordered list, and a predictable content sequence. Avoid using sensory characteristics (color, size, flashy graphics, etc) to communicate meaning or instruction. Text resizing should not affect the quality of your content. Ensure users can stop, pause, or mute audio and video files. 

User controls

Keyboard-only users should comfortably navigate your website without any barriers.  Graphics that flash rapidly are discouraged, with a limit of not more than three flashes per second. Web visitors should be able to stop, pause, or hide content that blinks or moves. Also, include closed captions for all videos on your website.

The above is a simplified and summarized checklist. Get a detailed AODA recommended web accessibility checklist and work towards meeting the deadline.

[aodawebcheck]

Free Web Accessibility Checklist for AODA Compliance

AODA requires that all organizations, private and public, have accessible websites to everybody in the society, including those with different disabilities. For websites, AODA requires businesses to comply with WCAG standards. Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 guidelines are internationally accepted standards. The good thing with WCAG guidelines is that they provide clear step by step instruction on how to make a website fully accessible. These instructions also provide an explanation about the importance of each guideline. For AODA, websites and other web applications must meet the A level of compliance. This is the minimum level. Eventually, they need to progress to AA and AAA, which means full compliance.

It is in the best interests of a business to comply with these standards. People with different impairments have big spending power. Besides, complying helps with SEO, thus improving your overall visibility.

Four broad principles in a web accessibility checklist are used in WCAG standards to ensure website accessibility. These are:

Operable- this means that users must navigate the website without any trouble.

Robust-this means that content within the website must be interpretable by different assistive technologies

Perceivable-user interface components and information must be in such a way that users can recognize it

Understandable-operation of the user interface must be understandable

To meet these broad principles, numerous small details must be fixed on the websites. To keep track of them and check where your website fails in compliance, you should make use of a free website accessibility compliance checker and then work from there.

[aodawebcheck]

Web Accessibility Checker Services in Toronto

The need for organizations and businesses to stay on top of their website and digital platforms is already necessary for profit and data driven analytics purposes. But when it comes to the importance of staying in line with the regulations in the AODO, that isn’t something that is just savvy and smart, it is also required by law.

A professional web accessibility checker will be able to take a thorough and detailed look at your entire system and see what exactly it is that you need to do to make sure that you are adhering to the letter of the legislation.

To Identify Current Compliance Issues

But more often than not, there are usually at least one or two things that need to be corrected. That is because the Act itself is so complex and really needs a technician or a company that can handle both the audit/inspection aspect of it as well as the web design and development.

To Identify Future Compliance Issues

Even when websites do find themselves fully compliant with the currently enacted points of the law, there is still always another stage of implementation coming soon. The next one is less than a year away, coming Jan. 1st, 2021.

To Help Determine a Strategy for Correction 

As we mentioned previously, an experienced web accessibility checklist that can also help create a redesigned or all-new plan for building a more compliant and functional site is extremely valuable in this field. It eliminates the need for two different techs to do one complete job.

[essentialaccessibility-blog]

eSSENTIAL Accessibility™ to ensure that their website is accessible to individuals with physical disabilities with Guidelines and Checklist. The only implementation step required is to display this symbol on the homepage as a clickable icon through which any visitor can download the assistive technology they require free of charge.