Prioritize accessibility testing to improve user experience and business results
Digital accessibility means thinking beyond compliance and focusing on continually improving websites to meet the nuanced needs of more people.
In brief
- When you understand and test for accessibility, you improve user experience for a greater number of people.
- This builds a more inclusive working world while supporting customer retention, organizational goals and business growth.
- Weave accessibility testing into development and maintenance cycles to make progress now.
Accessible digital design is more than a nice-to-have. One billion people — some 15% of the world’s population — experience some form of disability. Yet the vast majority of websites don’t offer a fully accessible experience.
That’s simply not good enough.
Ensuring your websites and digital solutions are widely accessible is critical to providing user experiences that feel inclusive, meaningful and capable of cultivating lasting customer and stakeholder relationships. To get there, businesses must cement accessibility at the very top of the priority list, and weave effective testing into the development process now.
What does digital accessibility really mean?
We know that 7 out of 10 web users with disabilities say they won’t tolerate inaccessible websites. When they leave in search of better user experiences, bounce rates go up and organic rankings drop.
That said: what does accessible truly mean?
Accessibility helps a wide range of people, including those living with varying visual, auditory, physical, cognitive, learning and speech adversities. Making websites and digital solutions fundamentally more accessible means considering this vast landscape of lived experiences, and testing functionalities to make sure they effectively address these areas.
For example, when colour contrast is low, menus don’t open properly, fonts are too small or links aren’t clear, users will struggle to interact with your site. These issues become especially challenging for people who use the web with help from assistive technologies. Users are unlikely to stick around on a website like this unless they absolutely have to.
By contrast, accessible sites, apps and solutions incorporate many different aspects of accessibility at every stage of design, development and maintenance. How? Accessible design is grounded in:
- Four fundamental principles, known as POUR:
- Perceivable: Information and user interface (UI) components are presented to all users in a perceivable manner; content can be presented in different ways that users can easily process.
- Operable: UI components and navigation are operable by all users using a keyboard rather than a mouse.
- Understandable: Users can understand and use the content of a website and be able to navigate with a clear understanding.
- Robust: Content is robust enough to be interpreted by various platforms, browsers, devices and assistive technologies.
- Conformance with the World Wide Web Consortium’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAGs).
This makes digital content usable to as many people as possible by providing a baseline against which you can test content based on three levels of conformance:
- A – minimum accessibility
- AA – addresses the major, most common accessibility issues
- AAA – the highest standard
EY teams address these factors by proactively discussing accessibility at the front end of development and baking time for accessibility testing right into our process. Case in point: accessibility testing was paramount to success as we developed a new content strategy and website for Motion, a Canadian brand that provides mobility and home accessibility solutions.
How so?
We reimagined the website to help people more easily find the information, products and support they need to live well. As part of development, we carried out a robust accessibility audit. Our goal? Think beyond compliance alone to identify any barriers that users with disabilities might face and recommend improvements to enhance the overall user experience for everyone visiting the site.
To be as comprehensive as possible, we assessed accessibility across all potential touchpoints a user might encounter on the site. For example, we recommended tagging elements that behave as buttons for assistive technology and making buttons include text explaining their functionality.
That theme carried over to many aspects of the site design. Links had to include text to set expectations for the page they lead to. Any links that opened in new tabs or windows would also need to be tagged for assistive technology. We dug into headlines, giving every page a single title providing information. This enabled screen readers to quickly assess what the main top of the page is. We also made interactive elements navigable using the keyboard and had a noticeable visual outline.
When it came to graphics, we tested the site to check that objects and embedded text of images were described for assistive technology — and nonfunctional icons and spacers were excluded from assistive technology.
From readability and contrast to cross-platform experience, we found the initial website met many accessibility guidelines. Also important, our testing surfaced a number of key issues that required maintenance or improvement to support all users with a better, more effective user experience regardless of their differing abilities.
The result? Our recent accessibility improvements led to a 5.6% increase in sessions, a 25.6% boost in goal completion, and a 20.9% rise in conversion rate, demonstrating that visitors are finding what they need more efficiently. We also improved the top-of-page rate by 76% — showing changes we made resonated, keeping users engaged and more likely to read or interact with it.
How can you improve accessibility testing now?
Teams can take accessibility testing further by first and foremost reinforcing its importance throughout the development lifecycle. Talking early and often about accessibility creates shared ownership over this priority and helps keep it top of mind for everyone working on the project.
With that principle as a guiding force, carve out time for accessibility testing before launching a new site, at regular interviews for accessibility maintenance, when you carry out significant site content updates and after conducting a site redesign.
We recommend focusing on these core areas to improve testing overall:
- Follow the WCAG guidelines and include user experience, manual, automated and user testing.
- Document all test findings and share them with the team.
- Report on the scope of the testing and evaluation parameters, like testing methods and user characteristics, to help folks prioritize which issues to address first.
- Focus on continuous improvement and testing at key milestones. Then, improve sites based on what you learn.
What’s the bottom line?
Digital accessibility testing based on WCAG guidelines is critical to becoming — and remaining — compliant while delivering a better, more effective user experience for all. Building accessibility testing into the development and maintenance cycles makes your site more accessible to more people, fosters loyalty and supports better business results.
