Preparing for an accessibility audit

Prepare your service and team for an accessibility audit.

Camden has a large and varied digital estate, so different types of testing are appropriate for different websites.

Use this guidance to help you decide what is right for your website.

What type of testing to do

All websites need to be manually tested, as well as tested with automated tools.

There are 2 main ways to do manual testing:

  • Detailed audit, testing a sample of your website against all WCAG 2.2 criteria. This method requires someone with specialist knowledge of accessibility.
  • Basic check, testing a sample of your website for the most common accessibility issues. This can be done by anyone and should use our basic check template.

At Camden, we use a mixture of these methods. Our digital estate has over 100 websites and while we must test them all, we focus our efforts on those sites with the biggest impact.

To decide which type of testing to do, consider:

  • Traffic – how many people visit the site, or do we think will?
  • Audience – is there a specific accessibility impact? Is it internal or external? Is it high profile?
  • User need – how critical is the content or subject matter? Is the site transactional or information-based?
  • Complexity – what page types and features exist? What technologies does it use? How much content is there? How frequently is it updated?
  • Maturity** **– Has is been tested before? When was it last tested?

Testing tiers and guidelines

Use the following framework to guide your decision:

Highest tier

  • Examples: camden.gov.uk
  • Traffic: Over 50,000 users per month
  • Audience: High profile, public-facing, high risk to disabled users
  • Site type: Large, transactional, complex or content-heavy
  • Testing level:Detailed audit by a specialistAutomated testing

High Tier

  • Examples: Housing Repairs, Local Offer, PCN challenge
  • Traffic: 5,000 – 50,000 users per month
  • Audience: Public-facing, higher risk to disabled users
  • Site type: Transactional, critical information, complex or content-heavy
  • Testing level:Detailed auditAutomated testing

Medium Tier

  • Examples: Families, Tie the Knot
  • Traffic: Under 5,000 users per month
  • Audience: Public-facing or internal
  • Site type: Small or medium-sized site, mostly informational, moderate complexity (could have simple forms or PDFs)
  • Testing level:Basic checkAutomated testing

Low Tier

  • Examples: Camden Design System
  • Traffic: Under 500 users per month
  • Audience: Small/internal audiences
  • Site type: Small site with simple, static pages
  • Testing level:Basic check with smaller sampleAutomated testing

Testing samples

Once you know what level of testing you will do, you need to decide on a sample of the website to test. This sample can be used for both automated and manual tests.

Preparation

Your sample should represent the different page types on the website, as well as content that is popular or relevant to accessibility.

You may need to:

  • review the site to identify page and content types
  • review site analytics to identify most popular pages
  • identify any content of particular relevance to users with access needs
  • refer to any previous audits so that you test different content

If the site is being tested by an external auditor, you will also need to check that they can access or login to relevant parts of the website. The auditor may also have their own suggestions of pages to test.

Choosing a sample

Use the following framework to decide on your sample.

Highest tier (20+ pages)

  • Homepage
  • Login
  • Contact page
  • Each page template
  • Search
  • A form
  • A PDF or document
  • Content with images, video or tables
  • Pages using different technologies or with different functionality
  • An end-to-end service
  • Accessibility statement
  • Most popular pages
  • A randomly selected sample (10% of the non-random sample)

High tier (15-20 pages)

Same as highest tier, but fewer pages.

Medium tier (5-10 pages)

  • Homepage
  • Login page
  • Contact page
  • Each page template
  • Search
  • A form
  • A PDF or document
  • Content with images, video, or tables
  • Pages using different technologies or functionality

Low (a few pages)

  • Homepage
  • Each page template