Easy Checks – A First Review of Web Accessibility
This page helps you start to assess the accessibility of a web page. With these simple checks, you can find out whether or not accessibility is addressed in even the most basic way.
These checks cover just a few accessibility issues and are designed to be quick and easy, rather than exhaustive. A web page could seem to pass these checks, yet still have significant accessibility barriers. More extensive assessment is needed to evaluate accessibility comprehensively.
Introduction
You will be able to perform any of the following checks on any web page. The results will give you a basic idea of how accessible the page is. Each check explains briefly what it is checking for and why this matters. The checks also tell you what you should be looking for.
Image alternative text (“alt text”) is a short description that conveys the purpose of an image. Alternative text is used by people who do not see the image.
Page titles are shown in the window title bar or tab in browsers. They are the first thing read by screen readers and help people know where they are.
Headings communicate the organization of the content on the page, like a table of contents. Screen reader users often use page headings as a way to navigate a web page.
Color contrast refers to the difference between adjacent colors. Typically this is the text and background color. It also includes interactive elements and their background, and parts of graphs or charts. Some people cannot read text or find elements if there is insufficient contrast between colors.
A skip link is the first interactive element on a page. People using keyboards, screen readers and other assistive technologies can use skip links to quickly and easily reach the main page content.
Keyboard focus is a visible indicator that identifies the element with focus and moves as your tab through a page. For people who rely on a keyboard to navigate it is important that they know which link or form control has focus.
Web pages should identify the primary language of the page. Specifying the language of the page means that assistive technology that speaks content can correctly pronounce words.
Zoom is used to enlarge the text and images on web pages to make them more readable. Some people need to enlarge content in order to read it. When content is zoomed it still needs to legible and usable.
Captions are a text version of the speech and non-speech audio information needed to understand the video and displayed with the video. The audio in video content needs to be available to people who are Deaf or hard of hearing.
Transcripts are a text version of the speech and non-speech information in audio content and available separately from the video. They are used by people who are Deaf, hard of hearing or who have difficulty processing audio information.
Audio description describes visual information needed to understand the content, including text displayed in the video, as part of the video. It provides content to people who are blind and others who cannot see the video adequately.