Accessibility
Make your first accessibility review useful
Follow one complete task, record barriers precisely, and use your findings to plan a broader review.
Choose a task and record the scope
Choose a complete task on a site you maintain: finding an opening time, using a search filter, or submitting a short form. Write down the pages, states, browser, and device you will examine. Include the starting point and the result a person should be able to reach. This gives the review a boundary that someone else can understand.
W3C WAI separates initial checks from conformance evaluation and emphasizes the need for knowledgeable human evaluation. Treat this exercise as a starting point with limited coverage. It can reveal barriers and guide further investigation. Passing these checks does not establish accessibility conformance or prove that every part of a site is usable.
Follow the task with a keyboard
Use the keyboard to move through the task, with the pointer set aside. Check whether you can reach the relevant links and controls, see which item has focus, operate the controls, and move onward. Include menus and any dialogs that appear. Record the exact point where progress becomes difficult or impossible.
The A11Y Project checklist provides prompts for keyboard review alongside links to relevant WCAG criteria. In your notes, describe behavior concretely: “The filter opens, but keyboard focus cannot reach its options.” That is a fictional example of a useful issue description. Add reproduction steps and the expected behavior so the next person can investigate.
Sources: The A11Y Project: Checklist
Review the information as well as the layout
Read the page title, headings, link labels, and instructions in the order a visitor encounters them. Each should explain its purpose with enough context to support the task. Check that headings describe a sensible structure and that the page's language is identified in its markup.
Enlarge the content with browser zoom and repeat the task. Look for clipped instructions, overlapping controls, and content you can no longer reach. Review text and control contrast using the relevant criteria and a suitable measurement tool. Visual impressions can prompt investigation; measurements and the applicable criterion make the resulting issue more precise.
Sources: W3C WAI: Accessibility Principles
Check forms and images in context
For forms, examine labels, required-field instructions, and error messages. A label needs to be associated with its control, and an error needs to help the person understand what happened and how to continue. Try both a successful submission and an input mistake using fictional data. WAI's forms tutorial explains labels, instructions, validation, and notifications together, which makes it a useful reference for the whole interaction.
For each image, identify its job. An informative image needs a useful text alternative; a decorative image needs appropriate decorative treatment. An image that acts as a control needs a name describing its function. WAI's images tutorial explains these distinctions. Judge the alternative in the surrounding content, including whether a chart needs a fuller text equivalent.
Turn observations into follow-through
Keep a short issue record with the affected page, reproduction steps, observed behavior, expected behavior, and evidence. Separate confirmed problems from questions that need investigation. Prioritize barriers that prevent the chosen task, assign an owner, and repeat the same steps after a fix. Keep the original scope visible when sharing the results.
Plan evaluation with people with disabilities as the work develops. WAI recommends combining that experience with standards-based evaluation and cautions against treating one person's experience as representative of everyone. Broaden the tasks, technologies, and participants as appropriate. The useful outcome of a first review is a clearer set of repairs and questions for the next one.
Sources: W3C WAI: Involving Users in Evaluating Web Accessibility