Happy Global Accessibility Awareness Day! As the global community meets to discuss and promote accessibility and inclusion, Perficient Digital is releasing a series of blogs today and over the next several weeks to discuss what we’ve seen over the past few years.
WebAIM, a non-profit organization from Utah State University, recently published a report on their evaluation of 1 million home pages. What the report discovered was eye-opening.
- 8% of the 1 million pages had failures.
- The average home page detected an average of 59.6 errors per page.
This doesn’t tell the entire story, as automated tools only detect less than half of all accessibility errors. The report results did not include errors detected from manual testing or testing with an assistive technology tool.
The good news is many of these errors are simple to fix. When meeting with an organization beginning their journey, starting with and resolving these top issues can be a logical first step and can dramatically improve the accessibility of site in a reasonable period of time. This should be done in conjunction with the creation of a long-term accessibility road map.
The most common errors identified by Web AIM were:
- Low Contrast Text
- Missing Alternative Text For Images
- Empty Links
- Missing Form Input Labels
- Missing Document Language
- Empty Buttons
In subsequent blogs, we will take a look at each of these topics in further detail.
Although accessibility awareness is increasing, there is still a long way to go. As I meet with clients from various industries, I notice an increased interest in accessibility and a desire to make their products “accessible.” However, for as much progress as has been made, there is still a continuing need for education and guidance in achieving ongoing compliance for their sites. Our hope is these series of blogs will promote awareness and help you on your journey.
Take a look at the first common accessibility error we’re going to address, Low Contrast!
