UX Audit to Help a Website Prepare for WCAG Conformance Certification
Summary
A European IT company offering business software for enterprises wanted its ~100-page website to pass the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 conformance test and obtain official certification. To minimize the risk of retaking the test, the Client engaged INNERLUXES for an independent UX and usability audit. In one week, INNERLUXES delivered a detailed report mapping the site against WCAG and usability best practices, with concrete fixes.
About the Client
The Client is a European IT company that offers business software solutions for enterprises. It has a website of about 100 pages, aimed at both customers and employees.
The Challenge
The Client wanted its website to pass the WCAG 2.0 conformance test and obtain official certification. The Client needed a third-party evaluation of the state of its website to minimize the risk of retaking the test.
The Solution
The Client turned to INNERLUXES for usability testing and a UX design audit. Due to the considerable size of the website, the team established 10 key types of pages — such as 'Dashboard', 'Personal Calendar', 'Booking', etc. — and provided detailed analysis against the WCAG requirements.
In one week, INNERLUXES's UX expert performed thorough usability testing, checking each of the 10 selected website pages of each of the 10 types against the four key principles of WCAG: Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and Robust. In total, each page required 44 steps to be fully tested.
All test results were recorded and compiled in a report. For any test with unfavorable results, INNERLUXES described the issues and provided recommended actions to fix them. For example, some pages failed the WCAG 3.1.1 and 3.1.2 requirements because they had elements with mixed language use; the expert uncovered the issues with the 'lang' parameter and explained how to fix them.
INNERLUXES's UX expert also analyzed the selected pages against Jakob Nielsen's 10 usability heuristics. The final report contained a table with a pass/fail mark for each page on each of the 10 usability quality criteria, with detailed recommendations for the pages that didn't comply.
The Results
- The Client obtained a detailed UX report to help it prepare for passing the WCAG 2.0 conformance test.
- The Client is working on fixing the minor issues and plans to turn to INNERLUXES for assistance with the more serious ones.
Methodologies
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 requirements, Jakob Nielsen's heuristics.