Preliminary Intranet Accessibility Evaluation

A brief summary of the work is provided below. More detail is available upon request.

Introduction

The UX team conducted a preliminary accessibility evaluation of the intranet. The objective was to identify aspects of the site that are not in conformance with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Level AA accessibility guidelines. An accessibility audit using the WCAG Evaluation Methodology (WCAG-EM) and the Section 508 Trusted Tester process will be conducted at a later date.

Approach

The approach was to conduct a preliminary or "quick and dirty" accessibility evaluation as described by Bulygina. The method included the following steps:

• Titles. Check that page titles are present and provided the needed information.
• Images. Turn off images and use the page. Check for missing information. Check alt text for needed information.
• Sound. Turn off the sound and use the page. Check whether the needed information is transmitted in modes other than sound.
• Contrast. Test color contrast. Check grayscale, colorblindness.
• Navigation. Navigate the site with only keyboard. Check whether you can navigate to all buttons and text, complete all forms, interact with all interactive elements. Check whether there are focus states.
• Sizing. Zoom in and use the page. Check whether site is still usable with text resize of 200-400% larger than default size.
• Page structure and hierarchy. View the code and check whether the heading and tag structure is logical and usable.
• Multimedia. View the multimedia and check whether there are alternatives for the audio and video. Are there transcripts, captions?

Results and recommendations

A 14-item list of reccomendations was drafted and shared with developers and management. An abbreviated list is presented below:

• Titles. Revise naming structure for page titles from “IMT Intranet – Title” to “Title – IMT Intranet”
• Color Contrast. Improve numerous instances of color contrast by implimenting solutions from the color contrast report (see seperate project).
• Navigation. Provide users with the section-level context for the "view all" links
• Navigation. Make the department dropdown element keyboard navigable.
• Navigation. Improve visual percievability of focus states for non-screen reader users
• Page structure. Add descriptive text to the logo so users know the link destination
• Page structure. For empty buttons, place content within the button element or give the input element a value attribute
• Page structure. Properly assocate form labels with form controls
• Page structure. Modify the header search fieldset