“Improve keyboard access” often leaves a manager with unfinished tasks. Then arise a lot of questions like: Which control fails? How can a developer reproduce the problem? What should happen instead?
Website accessibility audits generally check barriers affecting disabled people’s use of a site. A good report connects each finding to a user task, a clear development requirement, and a way to check the correction.
Agree: What the Audit Will Cover
Select a representative sample covering shared navigation, different content templates, and an important journey, for example, submitting an enquiry. Include error messages and expanded controls alongside the initial page view. A homepage-only assessment leaves that behaviour unexplored.
The web development agency Manchester businesses appoint to handle fixes needs the agreed scope and evidence needed to reproduce each problem. Establish who will investigate findings, implement changes, and verify the results before work starts.
Record the assessment reference, for example, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 Level AA, alongside the pages and interactions included. GOV.UK’s audit guidance supports representative sampling and evaluation beyond automated checks.
Look Beyond Automated Results
Automated checks can miss form labels and some colour-contrast failures. Establishing accessibility also needs manual evaluation: checking how controls behave, whether navigation makes sense, and how assistive smart technology interacts with the site.
Think about a hypothetical enquiry form with a custom “Enquiry type” selector. It opens with a mouse click, but pressing Tab skips it completely. In this example, there is no keyboard route to make the required selection, so a keyboard user is blocked from submitting the form. Test the whole interaction: reach the control, open it, pick an option, and continue.
Checking with disabled users adds insight into usability barriers and complements technical evaluation.
Turn a Barrier Into a Development Task
For the hypothetical form, “Selector inaccessible” needs to become a reproducible finding with an observable outcome. A compact issue record should have:
- Location and environment: the enquiry page address, “Enquiry type” selector, operating system and browser versions, plus assistive technology where used.
- Reproduction and observation: begin before the form and press Tab through its fields. Focus skips the selector, leaving no keyboard route to make the needed choice.
- User impact and expected behaviour: submission is blocked for keyboard users. They must be able to reach, operate, and leave the selector, with a visible indication of focus.
- Responsibility and verification: given an implementation owner and reviewer, record the relevant WCAG success criterion, and leave the retest result pending until checked.
Add screenshots or a short recording that clarifies the finding. Retain written reproduction steps alongside them, including the keyboard sequence and any good screen reader announcements.
Before implementation, agree acceptance criteria covering the full task: select an enquiry type, continue through the remaining fields, submit successfully, and get confirmation.
Prioritise By the Effect On Users
A compulsory control that blocks submission needs urgent attention. Assess other findings by the task affected, the severity of the barrier, the availability of an accessible alternative, and how broadly the component appears.
Warning counts require interpretation. If the same broken selector appears on several forms, investigate whether they share one underlying component. Link all known affected locations to that problem so implementation and verification cover each use.
Give less urgent findings owners and review dates too, so they stay visible in the work plan.
Retest the Task, Not Just the Page
After the selector is changed, repeat the original keyboard sequence. Verify that users can reach it, see where focus sits, make a choice, and move onwards without becoming trapped. Complete the enquiry, including correcting an invalid field and reaching confirmation.
Check other uses of the shared component, check relevant assistive-technology behaviour, and rerun automated checks for newly introduced issues.
Record the environment, date, and outcome. Close the problem when its acceptance criteria pass, and revisit those checks after relevant component changes. This documents a minimized barrier within the audit’s scope, instead of certifying accessibility across the whole website tool.
FAQs
1. What are the three types of audit?
Ans: The three types of audit are financial statement audits, operational audits, and compliance audits.
2. What are the two types of accessibility?
Ans: The two types of accessibility are digital accessibility and physical accessibility.
3. What are the 5 C’s of audit?
Ans: The 5 C’s of audit are criteria, condition, cause, consequences, and corrective action.
