Common Accessibility Issues and Solutions Identified in Audits

With the expansion in digital connectivity, making websites accessible to everyone has become imperative to fulfill your business and technological goals. It ensures inclusivity for all (whether disabled or not) in using and accessing websites.

You can evaluate the functioning and compliance of your website or other digital assets by WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) through digital accessibility audits. It also means being compliant with every country's law. It includes the European Accessibility Act (EAA), Section 508, Section 504, and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

You can carry out your accessibility audit through automation and manual testing with distinct assistive technologies. It helps to provide full coverage that automated testing cannot offer individually. Additionally, it is essential to make self-sufficient and long-lasting digital accessibility plans.

When you start your digital accessibility service, you might feel overwhelmed with all the various information and make some errors. This article deals with the most common accessibility issues and their solutions.

Most Prevalent Accessibility Problems

The most common accessibility issues that you need to focus on while conducting your digital accessibility audit are-

Not being able to use proper labels

When you properly label form controls, assistive technology will fail to link your labels with their control program, making it difficult for the users of assistive technology to understand the control's purpose. A few assistive technologies try to auto-correct this failure successfully sometimes; other times, it may mislabel the form control, leading to additional confusion or issues for users.

Non-descriptive Hyperlink text

A lot of times, the link text does not give enough information for a better understanding of the purpose of the link. Assistive technology helps users find, sort, and navigate to the page's link. Therefore, the text used is essential for the users of assistive technology to finish their tasks quickly.

Color Contrast

Including color combinations that do not fall under the WCAG guideline becomes a major issue for low-vision and color-blind individuals.

Table Markup

Tables are often used for layout, but page authors do not consider the way to linearize the content. It can create confusion among screen reader users. Actual data tables may lack proper markup for screen reader users to acquire information to understand specific data cells. Most of the time, an easy data table is presented in a complex data table, yet the needed markup is not present, creating accessibility issues.

Keyboard Incompatibility

Page authors fail to consider whether the user has complete access to the functionality of the page or app through the keyboard, whether or not the tab order matches the visual order, and whether there is a clear visual indication of current focus positions. Users who solely use a keyboard for navigation need to know the current focus point on the webpage. It deliberately hides focus indication, usually by suppressing the entire outline.

Insert Non-accessible Documents

Users usually fix PDFs or different inaccessible documents. Documents (like PDFs) that are considered digital products need to be made accessible for disabled users.

Using Heading Elements Improperly

A lot of pages contain content without heading elements, making it difficult for users to understand and navigate through the pages' structure. Heading elements are usually misused for virtual formatting intents rather than indicating content hierarchy.

Common Solutions for Accessibility Audit Issues

The solutions for accessibility issues that you need to focus on while conducting your digital accessibility audit are-

Creating Images with Alt Text

You can increase your website's accessibility with alt text. Including alt text is beneficial as it describes the visual content accurately with useful alt text. Users with cognitive disabilities or visual impairments may see your images. When you include your target keyword in your alt text, many users can read it. It also boosts your page's relevance for search engines. Additionally, it elevates your page's relevance, which describes what your web page is about.

Keep Color Contrast

The readability of your content depends on the suitable color contrast selection, especially for individuals with color blindness or visual impairments.

Structure your Headings and Content Properly

Use proper headings to structure your content for proper navigation. Use distinct heading styles to indicate hierarchy levels to describe the content precisely. It allows readers to identify every section's purpose for easy information transfer. It makes content more accessible for the users operating assistive technology.

Keep a Website-friendly Keyboard

Keyboard-friendly websites can be navigated through the mouse and not just the mouse. Such websites allow easy access with keyboard shortcuts.

Make Multimedia Accessible

Using audio, videos, and other elements of multimedia increases user experience and engagement. However, users with different disabilities have different needs. People with blindness may not be able to see the text but listen to the video and audio. However, individuals who are deaf cannot hear the audio; they can only see the video.