Accessibility testing

W3C is an international organization that has standardized the criteria applicable to website accessibility. On international level as well as in the majority of Hungarian tenders and state orders, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are referred to as the set reqiurements that have to be met by suppliers. Besides this there are several reasons why it is worth to make websites accessible.

WCAG 2.0 standard is available in Hungarian on the website of W3C Hungarian Office (Web Akadálymentesítési Útmutató 2.0). The standard defines three levels of accessibility. Level „A” is the lowest, which has to be fulfilled by any accessible website. Level „AA” (two As) defines a higher level availability and accessibility. In most cases level AA is recommended, especially for public interest, state, and municipality websites. The strictest is level „AAA”, which sets really high requirements to both website creators and operators. This level is mainly recommended to those who operate websites that are (or will be) visited by many disabled or handicapped people.

Accessibility analysis according to the WCAG 2.0 standard (A, AA or AAA) levels involves three steps. First, we review the website and assess what needs to be changed, what mistakes needs to be corrected in order to make the website accessible. We send our comments and the list of defaults to the contractor, so they can eliminate the failures listed. Upon request we participate and provide further help in these corrections. As the last step, we review the complete website again following the elimination of the listed failures, and in case everything is appropriate, we issue the certification. The accessibility analysis could take one week to one month depending on the size and complexity of the website.

It may be worth having an ergonomic and funcional analysis together with the accessibility analysis done, as in this case the creator of the website receives feedback about the accessibility, functional and ergonomic failures at the same time, which could be corrected in one step. These two areas are related to each other, as many ergonomic failures can result in accessibility failure.

Issuing the Accessibility Certificate

We issue an accessibility certificate following the accessibility testing which declares that the website meets WCAG 2.0 standard requirements. This is highly important in case of tenders and state orders.

The certificate is issued by the W3C Hungarian Office based on the three accessibility levels (A, AA or AAA) defined by WCAG 2.0 standard. The issuing of such certificate must in all cases be preceeded by an accessibility testing.