Evidently
Cochrane
Accessibility Audit
Overview.
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This Accessibility Audit was done
as a part of the MSc course work for the module Inclusive design.
Role.
Accessiblity Auditor
Timeline.
19th October – 07th December 2019
Please visit the updated version of the website here after deign improments suggested by the HCID students at City University of London.
Read the blog written about it here.
Challenge
Find out how accessible the website is for people with impairments and what steps should be taken to fix any found accessibility issues
Objectives
Conduct a expert accessibility audit on the Evidently Cochrane website against W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 and to provide recommendations to enhance the accessibility of the website.
Introduction
The audit was done manually as well as via automatic approaches using the browser extension such as “Wave- developer tool” and the HTML validator by W3C to check if they meet WCAG 2.1’s level A and AA guidelines. While conducting audit, the main concern was to analyse the web content from the view point of the user with disabilities on how they would use and experience the content and more importantly the types of issues they would face. Various approaches such as changing the website’s view by desaturating the colour of screen, disabling the images and style of the webpages and zooming the screen up to 200% was implemented. The common form of assistive technologies, such as screen readers was used to read the screen and the method of accessing the content only using the keyboard was done. Such process helped understand if the web pages would cooperate with the assistive technology.
Executive summary
The WCAG 2.1 guideline proposes on having the web content to be
1. Perceivable
2. Operable,
3.Understandable, and
4. Robust
which are the principles to make the web content accessibility
supported and programmatically determined. As described by the WAI website, a web content is an accessibility supported when the assistive technologies like the screen reader, text-to-speech, screen magnifier, keyboard can efficiently work with the web content. Similarly, a web content is said to be programmatically determined when the source code i.e., HTML, CSS, PDF, GIF, FLASH etc. are accessible to the user through the assistive technologies. Hence, in this accessibility audit for the webpages of evidentlycochrane.net, such guidelines were followed thoroughly in order to ensure, they were developed considering accessibility supported and the programmatically determined.
Unfortunately, as described in the summary, the 5 webpages were not able to meet all of the level A conformation of WCAG 2.1 guideline. The violation of the guidelines means the webpages were not accessible for the user with disabilities. The WCAG 2.1 was violated on the most webpage with minor to major issue causing slow interaction with webpage, disorientation and frustration to complete the task they intent on doing. The worst-case scenario which was discovered was that the webpages prevented users from completing their task and providing no workarounds for the errors caused.
Method
Total of five webpages were expert audited for the accessibility.
A: Home page
B: Evidence for everyday health choices
C: Avoiding malaria on holiday: evidence on how to reduce your infection risk
D: Scale and polish? Shining a light on routine dental care
E: Cochrane Crowd for students: what’s in it for you?
(The webpages are referred as A, B, C, D, E as above in Findings below)
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Whilst, doing the audit the main concerns were to utilise the understanding and insight on how the user with difficulties would experience the webpages. First, mouse was avoided, and the webpages was accessed using only keyboard. Similarly, the audit was done on the MacBook, the built-in voiceover was used to read the screen aloud and check if the website would response to it efficiently. The view of each pages was modified with zooming techniques to on “normal”, “100%”, “150%” and “200%”, to understand how a user with visual impairment would achieve their goal via a screen.
Furthermore, the pages were audited by disabling all the style of each webpages, via the wave accessibility evaluation tool for google Chrome, disabling the images view from Chrome settings, and word spacing from the extension called bookmarklet as suggested by the W3.org (https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/Techniques/css/C36 ). Hence, all the possible attempts were implemented to gain insight of the user’s perspective with difficulties such as visual, mobility, cognitive on accessing the website.
The severity check was also applied into the audit to inform the level of issue each webpages had. If required, immediate action can also be taken to aid better interactivity between website and the user. Following severity criteria are developed with the inspiration from the article “CUE-4” by Molich and Dumas (2006, p267) which will be used to assess the level of severities of the “Findings” on this report:
1: Minor problem= Brief delay to carry the task.
2: Serious problem= Delay user to complete their task creating frustration but let them complete
eventually. Has chances to cause occasional “catastrophes”.
3: Critical Problem= Can cause frequent catastrophes which means the user cannot complete their
intended task causing frustration and annoyance to the user.
4: Immediate action= No workaround or delay workaround. The webpage requires immediate redesign.
Findings
Sucessful
Findings
UnSucessful
Findings
