Our website just became even more accessible! At the end of June we scanned our pages using WAVE - produced by the WebAIM group - and FAE or Functional Accessibility Evaluator 2.0 produced by the University of Illinois. Most of our design passed fine, but we decided to increase compliance, especially in light of Section 508’s refresh to more closely align its federal requirements with WCAG 2.0 (details of the 508 Refresh are available as PDF slides and audio). While the standards broadly adopt A and AA compliance levels, we aim for a minimum of AA compliance and, where possible go for AAA.
The bulk of our errors were concerned with contrast if images didn’t load. Some others were with null alt attributes on images, which is acceptable in some contexts but not if the image is also a hyperlink (since hyperlinks may be navigated out of context). One particular contrast error was intentional because it is a staff only link, so we have temporarily increased the contrast until we implement a solution that is less obstructive to our general users.
The automated tests were scoped to the top level pages and anything that we owned and linked to from the home page. We did an additional scan on HSL’s page and some second tier pages to confirm compliance, since HSL’s pages are built using the library’s brand project used on the main website (so most of the issues were already addressed).
Some accessibility issues are centered on content and harder to automate testing for, and is a separate project we are looking into. We also have some known issues that do not raise automated violations but do not provide a good experience, such as a condensed all caps heading font, which is hard to read for people with visual impairments especially dyslexia. However, changing this will require content updates, so it is being postponed.
Previous to the automated scan, we had made some accessibility shifts so the “skip to main content” link is visible for sighted keyboard users, and the mega menu navigation is more easily navigated for keyboard users with expected behavior for opening/closing as well as moving through the hyperlinks.
In the future we would like to perform accessibility-oriented usability testing with actual people rather than automated tools. This will give us more useful feedback for providing good user experiences that also are compliant to federal and community standards.
We will continue to improve accessibility as we see opportunities as part of our dedication to providing access and good user experiences to all users. We welcome any feedback for areas to consider or suggestions to better meet WCAG standards and understand accessibility features are still evolving.
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