A website accessibility checker is a tool or software that evaluates a website’s compliance with accessibility guidelines and standards. It checks the website’s content, structure, and functionality to identify potential web accessibility barriers that may prevent people with disabilities from accessing and using the site effectively.
Website accessibility refers to the inclusive design and development of websites, ensuring that people with disabilities can perceive, navigate, and interact with the content and features. Accessibility is crucial because it enables individuals with various disabilities, such as motor, hearing, cognitive, or visual impairments, to access and engage with online information and services.
Why use a Web Accessibility Checker to make your Website Accessible
Making a website accessible is crucial to ensure that all individuals, regardless of their abilities or disabilities, can access and engage with its content. By prioritising accessibility, websites become inclusive and provide equal opportunities for everyone to participate in the digital world. Being accessible online can be grouped into three main reasons…
Legal Compliance
Many countries have enacted accessibility laws and regulations, such as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) internationally. Failure to meet website accessibility compliance can lead to legal consequences, including lawsuits and financial penalties.
Expanded Audience Reach
By ensuring you have an accessible website, you make it possible for people with disabilities to access your products, services, and information. This expands your potential customer base and improves your brand’s inclusivity.
Enhanced User Experience
Accessible websites provide a better user experience for everyone, not just disabled users. Features like clear navigation, text alternatives for images, and well-structured content benefit all users, leading to increased engagement, longer visits, and potentially more conversions. Assistive technologies such as accessible screen readers provide an option for people who prefer an auditory experience.
Improved Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Accessibility features can align with good SEO practices. For example, providing alt attribute text for images not only helps screen reader users understand the content but also assists search engines in indexing and ranking your site.
Learn more about how Web Accessibility and SEO benefit each other here.
Positive Brand Image and Reputation
Demonstrating a commitment to accessibility reflects positively on your brand. It shows that your business values inclusivity and considers the needs of all users. This can foster customer loyalty, attract new customers, and differentiate your business from competitors.
By utilising a web accessibility checker, businesses can identify and address accessibility issues on their websites, making them more inclusive and compliant. These accessibility tools typically provide insights, recommendations, and guidelines for improving accessibility, such as ensuring proper heading structure, providing alt text for images, implementing keyboard navigation, and more. Regularly checking and maintaining website accessibility helps businesses uphold their commitment to inclusivity, improve user experience, and mitigate legal risks.
How does a Website Accessibility Checker work?
Website accessibility checkers are a tool that assesses the accessibility of a website by examining its design, content, and functionality. It helps identify potential barriers that may prevent people with disabilities from accessing and using the website effectively. Here’s a general overview of how a website accessibility checker typically works:
Crawling the Website
The accessibility checker begins by crawling the website to gather information about its structure and content. It scrutinises HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and other resources to comprehend the site’s elements and their relationships.
Evaluating Accessibility Guidelines
The checker compares the website’s elements and attributes against established accessibility guidelines and standards, such as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). WCAG guidelines provide specific criteria to ensure accessibility for people with disabilities.
Identifying Accessibility Issues
The checker detects potential accessibility issues by comparing the website’s elements and attributes with the guidelines. It may search for missing alternative text for images, insufficient color contrast, inaccessible form fields, improper headings and semantic structure, and more. These issues are flagged for further review.
Generating a Report
After analysing the website, the accessibility checker generates a report that outlines the identified accessibility issues. The report typically includes descriptions of the issues, their severity or impact on accessibility, and suggestions or recommendations for resolving them.
Providing Remediation Guidance
Alongside the report, the accessibility checker often provides guidance on how to address the identified issues through website remediation. It may provide code snippets, best practices, and resources to assist developers and content creators in understanding and implementing accessible solutions.
Ongoing Monitoring
The Recite Me accessibility checkers provide continuous accessibility monitoring, allowing website owners to regularly check their sites for new or updated content. This ensures that accessibility issues are promptly identified and addressed, particularly as websites evolve over time.
Accessibility Score
The Recite Me Accessibility checker will provide an overall accessibility score or rating based on the number and severity of the issues found. This score can give an indication of how accessible the content is and the areas that require improvement.
How can the Recite Me Accessibility Checker help?
The Recite Me accessibility checker aligns with established web accessibility standards and guidelines, such as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). By utilizing this tool, you can identify areas where your website may fall short of compliance and make the necessary adjustments to meet the required accessibility criteria.
Scan
Start your accessibility evaluation with a free scan of your website. The checker will pick out accessibility errors that are preventing your site from being WCAG and ADA compliant. The scan will identify factors such as:
- Overall Site Performance
- Accessibility Scoring
- Findings Per Rating
- Breakdown of Errors
The initial scan report will provide an overview of the errors, where they can be found and how they can be fixed to meet all of the necessary web accessibility standards.
Fix and Check
Any accessibility guidelines that are currently non-compliant, the checker will compile an ordered list, with a priority placed on the biggest improvements to make for your time investment. Our software will identify the problem with ease, but it’s up to you to add the human touch and implement the necessary fixes. For example, the software can highlight images that have no alt tags, but it’s up to you to create alt text accessibility that appropriately describes the image.
Track
The Recite Me checker can also track your accessibility efforts over time, help you to make the most time and effort efficient changes first, and manage your accessibility fix queue. Various elements of the WCAG compliance can be explored through different scans and downloading your site’s accessibility score to track and report the journey.
Share
Download a sharable report that showcases your willingness to identify error and accessibility violations, to fix them and provide a more inclusive environment for your website’s users. A report along with your accessibility score can be shared to friends and colleagues, with key aspects of the report including:
- Customisable Monthly Reporting
- Ongoing Engagement Analysis
- Accessibility Scoring
- Downloadable Fix Lists
- Recite Me Hub Access – with materials that highlight the depth of information behind your website’s scan and results.
Start Your Web Accessibility Compliance Journey Today
Online accessibility is a journey, not a destination. Recite Me is here to help you every step of the way to provide an inclusive and compliant website. We save you time and money by highlighting what needs fixing first for the most effective results and the most significant return on investment.
Get to work on your online inclusion strategy today by running a free check of your website for WCAG 2.1AA compliance.
