Web accessibility is a very important topic lately, which has been made to ensure the compliance needs per the Americans with Disabilities Act and the WCAG standards of the World Wide Web Consortium. The success criteria of WCAG 2.1 Level AA decide the standards of web accessibility, which are also backed by the WAI (World Accessibility Initiative). Here in this article, we will put forth a checklist for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Level AA. As you may know by now, WCAG 2.1 is the latest accessibility standard by W3C, which came out in 2018.

This checklist is meant to assist the web design and developer community, content creators, and IT administrators. This checklist is based on the old WCAG 2. standards, and this may be soon updated with the 2.1 standards. Most of the items in this checklist may be applicable to the web pages, web and mobile applications, and other electronic documents in PDF, MS Word, images, and other formats.

Web accessibility checklist by AccessiBe

As per the WCAG guidelines, the four fundamental rules of accessibility are permeability, operability, understandability, and robustness. Further, let us explore the AccessiBe checklist. 

  • Perceivable

Here are the checklist questions to ensure that the website is perceivable.

  • Do the images have proper alt texts?
  • Do the video files have appropriate captions and audio transcripts?
  • Do the website pages have proper headings, landmarks of ARIA, listing, and other elements for proper document structure?
  • Are the tabs in order and the reading order logical?
  • Whether the form fields within the web pages or documents feature appropriate codes and prompts?
  • Is the usage of visual characteristics only for information sharing avoided?
  • Are the color contrast and text color versus background color adequate to be compliant with WCAG standards?
  • Is the content scale up and down well when text enlarges or shrinks?
  • Operable

The checklist for making all users’ controls and content operable is below.

  • Can keyboard access all the links, buttons, and menus only for the users who cannot use a mouse?
  • Does the web page include a focus indicator so that all the users can track their current position?
  • Are there features to scroll and update information automatically?
  • Are there proper accessible controls that enable the users to pause and advance such features themselves?
  • Do the pages with time limits consider the needs of special users who need more time to access?
  • Is the use of flashy content or flickers avoided?

  • Understandable
  • Are the web page and document language well defined?
  • Have you taken measures that controls, links, and form fields may not contain auto-trigger any change in the context?
  • Is the navigation on the website consistent?
  • Do the forms available provide accessible and verifiable messages?

  • Robust
  • Is the web page featuring valid and compliant HTML?
  • DO all the dynamic content, web interfaces, modal windows, drop-downs, carousels, slideshows, etc. Include the ARIA markup?

As AccessiBe suggests, all the questions need to be raised in order to ensure that all the WCAG 2.0 standards are met and the website is made ADA compliant.