Services

Please reach out via the contact link in the main navigation if you are interested in any of the below services.

Accessibility review

An accessibility review is an assessment of how well a client’s site holds up against modern accessibility standards published within WCAG 2.x. Reviews can be conducted at level A, AA, and/or AAA depending on the requirements of the project.

Reviews are made up of automated and manual testing phases. Automated testing is well set up to catch static errors such as color contrast, HTML, missing ALT text, and the like, which typically accounts for ~30% of accessibility errors within a project. Manual testing is set up to catch anything a scanner cannot such as: keyboard bindings and accessibility, interaction testing, and issues arising from miscellaneous responsive behaviors. The combination of these two methods is well established in the industry as standard and best practice.

An accessibility review includes

  • An automated testing phase that includes scans on representative templates.
  • An optional full-content scan where all URLs are scanned and data is outputted into a spreadsheet format.
  • Manual testing on representative templates.
  • A document summarizing all findings
  • A spreadsheet detailing each issue with a recommendation for remediation to help support the next phase of the project.

Accessibility review resources

Accessibility remediation

Accessibility remediation is a project phase reserved for addressing any accessibility issues that are either brought to us or have surfaced through a previous accessibility review phase.

Accessibility remediation includes

  • All issues transferred into issue tracking software (if not already transferred).
  • Remediation of agreed upon documented accessibility issues.
  • A secondary accessibility review to confirm all remediation is complete.

Accessibility remediation resources

Editorial Training

Content is the most actively updated part of any website, it’s the reason we have a content management system. Because of this, it is important to offer some level of editorial training for content editors.

There are items even the best scanners and automated systems cannot catch. While we are able to look for things like missing ALT text, we cannot scan for the quality of such an item. This is where training is critical to maintaining an accessible site of application. Educating clients on topics such as, “Writing good ALT text,”, “Basics of Accessibility”, or even “What is WCAG?” can go a long way in bringing everyone to the same starting point and goal-setting. Training can happen in single or multiple meetings depending on the needs of the project.

Training will be customized for each client, but all training will, at a minimum, contain the most common editorial issues we encounter:

  • How to create inclusive, accessible content
  • Page structure
  • Alternative text
  • Audio & video

Editorial training can even extend into more advanced accessibility training should the client have an engineering team that will be maintaining the site or application on a day to day basis.

Editorial Training Resources

Standard Site Build with WCAG Compliance

If a project design is executed by a UX and Design teams, that minimum compliance level can be elevated beyond AA. This is a standard service we offer and is not broken off into an independent service, but rather an expectation alignment with the craftsmanship we promote.

WCAG 2.x, Level AA Compliance

Clients often ask for Level AA compliance, in these instances we need design, UX, and engineering to work closely together to ensure end to end compliance. Estimates that contain this level of compliance can expect more collaborative meeting times between engineering and design along with more aggressive QA and engineering. This may also affect components, but the impact should be minimal since we already build to AA in engineering.

Editorial Inline Assistance

Editorial assistance will help maintain accessibility after remediation is complete, but will also help an editorial team level-up the content they are creating to ensure a site stays accessible for years to come. We focus on this editorial-level accessibility because the content of a site is the most heavily updated part of a site. Keeping these checks in place makes sure something isn’t published that fails compliance. We can check anything an automated scanned can check including ALT text, HTML, headings, and also provided inline documentation tips on how to improve content.

The Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG) help guide content editors in creating WCAG 2.x compliant content and creating tools to help editorial teams maintain a high level of accessibility without technical intervention saves money and time in the long run for all.

Editorial Inline Assistance Resources

Ongoing Monitoring

Ongoing monitoring and being proactive with accessibility on a site can allow a client independence and insight into the health of their project. After we get a site up to an acceptable compliance level we can start roadmapping future maintainability with a client. There are multiple systems we can set up, which include:

  • Periodic automated scanning of all pages
  • Periodic component-level automated testing

Each monitoring system can be set up to run at predefined intervals and either use approved third party software or custom integration into the dashboard.