Accessibility Testing

Table of contents

What We Do

Why Should I Care about Accessibility?

Basic Accessibility is Easy

What We Do

Access Keys offers website accessibility testing in conjunction with its awards scheme. Our automated testing is free but can only test very basic aspects of your website's code and can only indicate whether a site meets the literal requirements for accessibility or indicate any possible problems.

To be certain that your site is accessible in a real world sense to the highest possible percentage of your target audience it needs to be manually assessed by an expert.

Our staff will test the main page of your site and an example of each different page template as well as any important forms, tables or multimedia files to determine how accessible your site is to various user groups. We will then create a unique report to explain any problems we found and will offer a one-to-one consultation to give our suggestions on how to make your site more accessible. We will also answer any questions you might have about the report.

By submitting your site for a manual check you become eligible for a listing in our directory plus further Access Keys Awards which will be indicated alongside your directory listing.

Why Should I Care about Accessibility?

Accessibility is good for your business for a number of reasons:

• It's the law. The Disability Discrimination Act requires that any website offering goods and services to the public must be accessible.
• It's good business sense. With ten million UK residents considered disabled, you could be losing a lot of custom if they cannot access your website.
• Making your site accessible can significantly help improve your search engine rankings.
• Making your site accessible can cut down on your bandwidth.

If your site is accessible and you have an Access Keys award displayed prominently on your pages then your customers will know you are committed to providing them with a rewarding experience.

Read more about why accessibility is good for business.

Read more about accessibility and search engine optimisation.

Basic Accessibility is Easy

Achieving a basic level of accessibility for your website is not difficult, expensive or overly time-consuming once you know what to do. While it is easier to build accessibility into a new website, it is possible to make subtle and simple changes to an existing site to provide at least a basic level of accessibility:

• Your site must make sense when linearised
• Your site must be navigable without a mouse
• You must use alt text (ie text to explain your images) correctly
• You must properly label all form fields

You should strive for more than just basic accessibility. An accessible site will improve usability and will encourage repeat business.

The first step towards knowing how to make your site accessible and usable to every potential customer is to find out what you are doing right and what you are doing wrong. An accessibility expert to study your website and to advise your developers can provide them with the knowledge they need to create a site that will provide universal access to all your potential customers and will provide positive branding at the same time.