Keyword: Accessibility Audit
Accessibility is an integral part of web design and development. After developing a website; it is also important to have an accessibility audit so that one can find out the areas of improvements. Recently, Accessible Minds has helped a retirement financial service website to audit and make their website completely accessible.
About the Client:
Our client is a Canada based finance company that deals with financial services to the retired people. As the maximum number of users of their website is aged people; accessibility is of their prime importance while redesigning the website. Their website must meet all the accessibility guidelines so that they have a maximum number of satisfied users who feel no hassle while using their service.
What do they want?
The retirement financial service provider reached out to Accessible Minds after receiving accessibility testing service from another client. While the initial testing process identified some accessibility issues, our client wanted to ensure that it was fully compliant with accessibility guidelines and standards. That’s why they asked Accessible Minds to engage in performing the accessibility audit and ensure that it meets all the required standards.
Challenges:
The website has a large number of complex pages that has made difficult for our team to access the accessibility of the site comprehensively. Moreover, the internal team of the client had limited knowledge about accessibility and they were not aware how to implement them. The budget is another important aspect as the website team was concerned that addressing all the accessibility gaps would be costly and time-consuming.
Solutions we Provide:
Our team started the project with a high-level review of the accessibility standard of the website. Our audit identified a significant number of accessibility gaps and deficiencies that were not covered in the previous testing. We recommended a comprehensive website audit for accessibility issues along with suggestions to fix them.
The Accessible Minds team of engineers started the accessibility audit. The conducted audit was a combination of manual and automated testing to find out all the accessibility gaps on the website. We also have non-sighted testers in our office who help greatly to identify accessibility issues, especially in the areas of keyboard navigation, color contrast and alternative text for images.
Accessible Minds then provided the website team with a detailed report outlining all the accessibility gaps along with recommendations to address them. The report included a VPAT (Voluntary Product Accessibility Template) that was revised to reflect the accessibility gaps found during the audit.
After finding out the issues in the audit, Accessible Minds provided an accessibility service to our client. The service involved working with the team to fix the identified accessibility gaps and ensure that the website was fully accessible to all users.
Result:
With our guidance, their team successfully implemented the accessibility recommendations. Finally, their website becomes compliant with all the required accessibility guidelines and standards. The internal IT team also gained a better understanding of accessibility and how to implement it, so that they can avoid future accessibility issues.
Conclusion;
Our comprehensive accessibility audit and accessibility service helped the retirement financial company to achieve much needed accessibility compliance. They were much pleased with the outcome and acknowledged that it would not have been possible without the expertise and guidance of Accessible Minds.