EXPERT ACCESSIBILITY REVIEW
The project required for the Inclusive Design module’s coursework was an expert accessibility review of an online store where one can borrow everyday items from. For the purpose of this project, a specific product path was reviewed with multiple tools and manual testing where I carefully analysed the various elements on each page. The functionality of the user journey was reviewed using the WCAG 2.1 Accessibility Guidelines (up to conformance level AA as per the coursework guidelines), each Accessibility Guideline was tested manually using keyboard only, Voice Over on Mac, the Wave Tool and Chrome Lighthouse.
The findings generated from the review and recommendations for improving the user accessibility were then presented in the form of a report. The process gave me awareness for those factors that most people would take for granted, but that become essential if we consider a broader diversity of users.
Method
For a web page or a website to be classified as accessible, it has to be able to be used by users with limited ability. For a website to be accessible, it needs to be meeting the success criterion provided by WCAG. Below is the list of webpages tested against the WCAG Guidelines for the purpose of my coursework:
• Home page (https://www.libraryofthings.co.uk/)
• The Things / Catalogue page (https://www.libraryofthings.co.uk/catalogue/browse)
• Cordless Jigsaw (https://www.libraryofthings.co.uk/catalogue/borrow-jigsaw-cordless) and adding this item to the cart.
• The Cart (https://www.libraryofthings.co.uk/cart)
For my review, I went through each and every guideline provided by WCAG and manually checked the website against the success criterion of the guideline. As per the course brief, I only went up to conformance level AA. My finding are presented in a tabulated form later in the report. In order to have a holistic understanding of the guidelines, I also referred to WUCAG. To test the severity of an identified guideline fail, I used Jakob Nielsen’s severity rating as a tool to prioritise the problems in terms of the web page’s usability. I also used the Wave Tool and Lighthouse, which provided feedback in a visual format in regards to the accessibility issues on a webpage. This aided my review process by highlighting key issues like missing headings, blank buttons, colour contrast issues and links present on the page. In addition to that, I used the Apple screen reader on Safari and tested each web page in the user journey and listed down the issues that I came across. The listed issues were then classified under each WCAG guidelines’ Success Criterion to check if it has failed or not. If failed, they were noted in a tabulated form with a severity score assigned to them, based on the accessibility of the user affected by the issue recognised. The methodology of checking the webpages manually via keyboard only and the screen reader, provided me with valuable insights on the accessibility issues of the user journey. To start off with, I checked the webpages against Guideline 1.3.1 Info and Relationships on the 16th of November, 2020. Upon reviewing the website via keyboard only and then the screen reader, I concluded that the flow of information to is not in order. Moving to the second guideline 1.3.2 Meaningful Sequence tested on the same day, I established that the keyboard focus does not move in a sequential manner as it would appear to a user with visual and motor ability to navigate the website through a mouse. Testing the next guidelines on 22nd November, 2020, 1.4.10 Reflow and 1.4.4 Resize text, using Google Chrome to magnify the pages to 200% and 400%, I came to understand that the usability of the page is severely impacted at those levels making it very frustrating for the users with low vision to navigate through the pages. While manually testing the journey through keyboard only on 2nd December, 2020, I concluded that there are a number of other guidelines like 1.4.13 Content on Hover or Focus, 2.4.7 Focus Visible, 2.1.1 Keyboard and 2.1.2 No Keyboard Trap were also being violated with a severity rating of 4 while 2.4.3 Focus Order was rated 3. Lastly, upon inspecting the website via the screen reader and using the Wave Tool on 7th December, 2020, it came to light that the headings on the web pages are not in order, failing Guideline 2.4.6 Headings and Labels, repeated content like the global navigation did not have a skip to main content option failing Guideline 1.4.3 Contrast (Minimum) and at numerous occasions the website did not meet the minimum contrast ratio, also failing Guideline 1.4.3 Contrast (Minimum). Hence affecting the ability of low or no vision to differential between information being presented to them and navigate through the website.