Day 89: Writing a Real Accessibility Evaluation

Published on 27 Feb 2019

• journal
• review
• was
• evaluation
• quality-assurance
• testing
• wcag

Today I had the joy of practicing what I've been learning over the last 88 days. I've been itching to work through a formal evaluation, and this real opportunity came up.

• Presented an accessibility issue to an accessibility working group that I chair.
• Wrote an official evaluation to a separate working group to present aforementioned findings in a formal way.

First, I gathered the details that I'd written down. Next, I walked through the WCAG-EM Report Tool to reaffirm my findings, as well as add to them. Lastly, I composed a formal evaluation of the features that were not in conformance with WCAG 2.1, Level AA.

The base outline of my evaluation:

1. Overview
2. WCAG-EM evaluation
   1. Scope
   2. Failures
3. QA testing
   1. Automated testing
   2. Manual testing
   3. Personas
4. Remediation recommendations

The process of evaluation can take a quite a bit of time, especially for someone who is new. I had to re-read many WCAG success criteria over again, limit my scope, and deeply think about what techniques were sufficient, advisory, or failures. Additionally, I encountered some bad practice and some not-so-optimal coding solutions, but refrained from delving into those since they are were not part of the aim of conformance. It was a true learning experience, and one I hope to refine over the next few years!