Keith w4 a 2012

Certification or conformance: making a successful commitment to

WCAG 2.00Suzette Keith, Nikolaos Floratos, Gill Whitney

16-17 April 2012W4A, Lyons France1

W4A 2012

http://www.w4a.info/2012/

Low levels of conformance to accessibility guidelines


European benchmarking studies show very low levels of conformance to accessibility guidelines:

“3% passed the full range of level A automated and manual checkpoints in 2008”(MeAC 2008)

Meeting accessibility guidelines


WCAG 1 (1999) and 2.0 (2008) Are internationally agreed and recognised Are embedded into national laws, frameworks

and best practice guides Can be used to support procurement Are referenced in national certification schemes

How do you know if a website is accessible?


Web accessibility certification Most offer a directory of successful websites All provide a certification logo Different schemes apply different test protocols in

different national contexts

Voluntary declaration of conformance WCAG 2.0 includes guidance on claiming conformance The webpage can display a logo and link back to WCAG

2.0 conformance Statement of web accessibility policy and action taken No system of monitoring

Does voluntary conformance meet user needs?


ANEC – ‘the consumer voice in standardisation in Europe’

Question: Is there a need for greater quality control? What is the impact of certification or voluntary declaration

of conformance to web accessibility guidelines? Given the low level of conformance by websites making a

declaration of accessibility, how can we better understand the causes and indicators of progress?

Finding websites claiming accessibility


Selected countries Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain and UK

Sources Major websites previously identified in MeAC Directories of certification bodies Directory of standards compliant web developers Backlinking search to WCAG compliance logos

Inspecting conformance


Selection criteria 100 websites: half were certificated and half made a voluntary

declaration 5 EU countries having certification schemes Most (76) from Government and Public body Some (24) from Commercial sector

Automatic testing (SortSite) Over 100 test points to WCAG 2.0 25 pages Minimal expert intervention

Manual testing by expert evaluator Only those with 10 or less failed test points Five pages inspected

Automatic test results


Automatic test points passed/failed Certified

Self declaration

Total %n=74

Pass WCAG 2.0 A 0 3 4%

Fail 10 or less test points 12 8 27%

Fail 11-20 test points 15 12 36%

Fail 21 or more test points 10 14 32%

Table 1. Results of automatic tests of government and public body websites

Manual Inspection


23 government and public body websites inspected

2 passed all WCAG 2.0 level A checkpoints

Both of these were certificated

Success criteria: Average of 4 criteria failed

(range 0-8) 19 different level A criteria

failed 5 success criteria account for

half of all failures

Analysis of success criteria


WCAG 2.0 level A criteriaNumber of certified websites failing this

criteria

Number of self declared websites failing this criteria

Text equivalence: 1.1.1 6 7Information and relationship: 1.3.1 4 5

Link purpose: 2.4.4 3 6

Labels: 3.3.2 4 5Name, role, value: 4.1.2 3 5

Table 2 Top 5 failed WCAG 2.0 level A criteria

Discussion


Certification to national standards Lack of consistent results between

certification bodies and WCAG 2.0 Voluntary conformance declaration

Indications of commitment but no monitoring process

Specific success criteria Multiple failures of level A , but all

offered breadcrumb trail, AAA criteria Website complexity

Evidence of best practice in complex government information websites

Conclusions


Need to establish trust in accessibility declarations whether voluntary or certificated – passing at WGAG 2.0 level A should be routine!

Further evidence needed to identify persistent accessibility issues could be collected by certification bodies and researchers in order to support improvements to tools and training

Need learn from the commitment of developers who deliver best practice solutions at level A and higher

Thank-you


Contact lead author: [email protected]

This research project was funded by ANEC with Nikolaos Floratos as project manager

Expert inspection was carried out by Andrea Kennedy ++ for Shaw Trust

Additional expert support from Cam Nicholl and Gavin Evans, previously from Shaw Trust and now with Digital Accessibility Centre

Automatic test tool support from Mark Douglas, SortSite Research programme and activity carried out by Suzette Keith

and Gill Whitney, Middlesex University

W4A 2012

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.w4a.info/2012/

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Keith w4 a 2012