Website Accessibility Testing

Does your website comply with all the relevant accessibility legislation? How would you know? Do your staff know how to deal with disabled colleagues, visitors and customers? Are your premises accessible? Do you need training in the use of assistive technologies? Whatever accessibility-related issues you have, Intellitech I.T. Solutions Ltd. has the answer.

Technical Accessibility Testing

There are two sets of internationally recognised accessibility guidelines:

1. The World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)

The W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines specify 65 technical criteria to be tested. The technical criteria are further divided into 3 main Priority levels, know as Level 1, Level 2 and Level 3. Priority level tests are important but they are generic and only indicate what the level of accessibility SHOULD BE, not WHAT it actually is.

2. Section 508, which is predominantly used in the USA.

Section 508 guidelines only apply to United States Federal websites or US Federally-funded websites. Section 508 compliance comprises all the WCAG Priority Level 1 checkpoints in addition to five checks which are not present in the WCAG Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

 

Over the years, our accessibility testing associates have developed a range of manual testing techniques to correctly and effectively verify the compliance of a given website with the guidelines mentioned above through the use of various accessibility tools, where they improve efficiency.

Supplementary Guidelines

Do you require testing to comply with any other set of guidelines?

We can perform accessibility testing for any website for compliance with other certification schemes such as RNIB's "See-it-right", and we can advise companies, organisations, charitable institutions, and individuals wishing to create their own internal guidelines.

Disability Discrimination Action (DDA) Compliance Testing

The Disability Discrimination Act 1995 requires that you take "reasonable measures" to ensure the accessibility of your website.

The DDA is concerned with "user experience". In this case, we generally would highly recommend both technical testing for the Priority Level 1 and Priority Level 2 requirements of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and user testing with a variety of users and assistive technologies.

Our associates would be more than happy to guide you based on your invidual websites' requirements in every circumstance.

User Testing

We conduct user testing with disabled people and their respective assistive technologies to assess the accessibility of websites and software applications. User testing can be generally performed with a variety of user groups e.g. users with visual and hearing impairments, mobility impairments, cognitive impairments, etc.

Our user based technical testing is conducted in a manour to allow the assessment of each page within a given website in isolation, whereas most website use is based around tasks.

Automated Testing

Automated accessibility testing is not a substitute for manual testing but it can play an important part in some web development and / or software application projects.

A number of automated tools are exist in the marketplace which are available for this purpose, and we can normally advise you on the selection and customisation that would be most appropriate for your individual requirements.

 

For further information, and / or to request a FREE Quotation with NO-OBLIGATION, please contact us via telephone, on: +44 (0)207 099 2181, alternatively, you can contact us online.