Being busy with accessibility audits because everybody want’s to make their accessibility statements made me think about usefulness of them. When is an usability statement useful? Hint – it’s not about how good your Lighthouse scores are. It’s about how you can help real people with real problems.
Tag: WAD
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In this blog post I go into details behind automatic accessibility testing and how I don’t really trust any accessibility scores such tools provide.
It all drills down to inability of automatic tools to pass WCAG success criteria and limited ability of them to fail some. Manual testing is the only real way to really know about state of accessibility.
Before you order your accessibility audit you should read this article of mine. I try to be objective and constructive and present the good and the bad, the strengths and the weaknesses of accessibility audits.
Some reflections after two years. Progress is slow, but steady. Personally I would invest into automatic testing solutions to monitor some basics, but that’s probably not possible before stakeholders, politicians and organizations really understand the impacts.
Another reflection on the business impacts of making things accessible. Investing in accessibility now will for sure make commercial advantage for us as people or companies. It’s not only the right thing to do, it also makes sense commercially.
Just a brief reflection on the business side of the accessibility equation that can easily be set on side.
European Accessibility Act will for sure have huge positive effects on the e-commerce, and I hope it will help also other sectors and small-businesses.
Minimum viable product that is not accessible is not really minimum. And then also the WCAG on level AA is the minimum, a baseline. When we reflect over those two facts – we must agree that MVP must at minimum conform to WCAG 2.1 on level AA. If this MVP will run in EU’s public sector even WCAG 2.1 on level AA alone is not the minimum.
Need for quicker digital product deliveries connected with remote work due to pandemics and the soon-coming European Accessibility Act will most certainly make a gap in the need for accessibility specialists. Current situation of certified accessibility professionals by the IAAP may indicate which countries are more prepared and which less. The fact remains that we need more accessibility specialists and we need them now!
European authorities published accessibility reports from multiple EU lands and I decided to read all of them and make short summary with my personal comment about them. A lot can be learned from their first auditing and there is a lot that can and need to be improved throughout Europe.
If you own an online shop I really suggest that you make it as accessible as possible. European Accessibility Act will require it from you, but let’s rather think about getting more customers, non-discrimination of people with disabilities and better search engine optimization as the main drivers for making eCommerce accessible.
Time flies, pandemic has for sure thought us about the value of digital parallel world and that unfortunately not everybody can be a part of it. European Accessibility Act will try to do something about it. Soon but not so soon. If you are a bank or maybe just a one-person-online-shop, then you should be a bit more serious about your accessibility!
23th of June 2021 is the final step of Web Accessibility Directives mission to improve accessibility of web and native mobile. WCAG 2.1 applies for mobile as well, but there are some exceptions. At the same time I touch the importance of accessibility in our Covid / Corona pandemics situation.
European Accessibility Act became law in 2019 but it will be adopted in 2022. This will add benefits of web accessibility directive also for selected parts of private sector. E-commerce accessibility efforts will benefit all of us, that’s for sure.
Not everybody can or want to use their apps in a single predefined screen orientation. It should be a matter of preference and choice. That is accessibility as well. And we even have it as an WCAG Success Criteria. And yes – it should also be applied to native mobile devices.
Today, 5th of February 2021 a decision was made – EFTA member states – Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland will start to integrate European Web Accessibility Directive. Another big step towards an more accessible future.
Extremely valuable documentation that reveals some interesting points about future of Web Accessibility Directive monitoring methods, tools and also some less clarified reporting matters. The accessibility statement automatic analysis will most certainly also have a central role and it is worth following on the Accessibility Conformance Testing rules that are the engine of all automatic tools out there.
2020 was a special year and not only negative, it was especially positive for the accessibility, both for the world and for me as well.
I have now evaluated some simple and complex websites, and even a whole banking digital presence and here are some notes and thoughts about lessons learned.
After some practical accessibility statement preparation work I decided to describe some thoughts of mine on the best practices that can be useful for it.
Some thoughts and investigations of mine on compliance and what does it really mean to be compliant. This seems like a simple declaration but is it really so simple?
Today is a big day for accessibility in the European Union and beyond. Still long to the ultimate goal but an important milestone.
Exactly one month until all public sector websites in the European Union must be accessible. Or to be more realistic – until they will have to let the users know where they still need work on accessibility. A positive direction nonetheless.
Public sector websites published before 23 September 2018 must be compliant by 23 September 2020.
Public sector in the European Union requires accessibility statement within Web Accessibility Directive, but that does not mean that you should not have such a statement even if you are not a part of public sector or even if you reside outside EU.