We recognise the value of certain tools for different phases of your website so we pay special attention to six key steps that will help guide you through the project. These steps will ensure we collectively reach the project’s accessibility aims and objectives.
1. Plan
It’s important to include accessibility considerations in the initial phase. Planning includes everything from writing, content, design, development, testing, review and launch. Reviewing your existing site structure and content, understanding whether it is WCAG2.1 compliant and your defining your user’s accessibility experience are some of the planning considerations.
2. Design
Our design needs to draw from your content, match to user and audience needs and provide a visual platform to effectively communicate your company messages. It needs to work with proper text and multi-media content, consider the different ways users interact with the site and provide the right layout and formatting for the client and their end users.
3. Develop
Our developer will be able to take a lot of accessible input from the design we create. However, there are additional programming requirements for accessibility that need to be considered in the background, including native HTML elements, implementing the correct structure, keyboard actions and error reporting.
Accessibility is the process of making something as usable by as many people as possible.
4. Test
This step is so important. The only way we will know that a site looks and performs correctly is if we test its functionality, operating system and cross browser performance. We can do this through a combination of automated testing and monitoring software, manual user inspections and screen-reader testing.
5. Review
Ultimately, everything that goes into the site should be on brand, relevant and accessible. If there are external site components then they too will need to be compliant, as will any other legacy content and downloads. If you are planning a pre-launch marketing campaign make sure that also ticks the boxes for all users.
6. Launch
Finally, you will be ready to launch but before you sign-off and go-live you will need to coordinate launch activities with accessibility conformance, company objectives and timings. We provide a seamless ‘handover’ and can help you write and deliver your industry-recognised accessibility report and statement.
Want to find out more about making your website more accessible? Contact us for a free 1 hour, no obligation chat about your project.