Evaluation
How to audit a website, following the official procedure of the WCAG 2.
Introduction to Accessibility Evaluation
The WCAG 1.0 did not have any official way to audit the accessibility of the websites. This led to the creation of different non-official evaluation methodologies. For example, the European Union founded the Unified Web Evaluation Methodology or UWEM, which was never adapted to the new WCAG 2.
The evaluation procedure
The core procedure provides five sequential steps, and each step has its own sub-steps.
Evaluation tools
Tools can reduce the time and effort required to carry out evaluations, as they can automate tests or assist reviewers in the manual evaluation. However, we have some bad news:
- The WCAG 2 does not provide an official tool to check the websites.
- There is not any fully automatable, stand-alone evaluation tool, even non-official, which can perform the whole audit.
- The W3C does not promote nor endorse any tool.
- Tools’ results may be false or misleading, so an expert review has to embrace or dismiss them.