Accessibility Audit for ResourceSpace Software

Montala Limited had been receiving an increasing amount of interest regarding the accessibility status of their digital asset management software, ResourceSpace, from potential customers. To enable them to answer these queries, they required a report that they could provide to customers clearly stating the level of alignment.

Blue Frontier recommended executing an accessibility audit against the latest AA Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and producing a report that demonstrated how the system aligned to each sub clause of the standard.

Blue Frontier also provided a revised Accessibility Statement for the customer to publish on their website, as well as some ‘quick win’ recommendations from one of our frontend designers to help Montala Ltd increase the level of accessibility of their product going forwards.

Lastly, Blue Frontier recommended performing annual audits thereafter with accompanying revised Accessibility Statements to cover recent code changes / enhancements made to the product on an ongoing basis.

Once the agreement to perform an audit was in place, the initial goal was to identify the scope of the audit by familiarising ourselves with their software. This included creating different user accounts to ascertain which functional areas of the software could be assessed; i.e., use of colour, different layouts, form filling, change of settings, etc. The software was quite complex with several functions, however, when looking at the layout, there were common themes which made it easier to work out which functions should be included in the audit.

The next step was to work out which techniques were going to be used, and to perform the audit against the number of criteria set by the WCAG. Automated tools such as Sort Site and webAIM WAVE were used to help search for missing alt text, invalid HTML and low colour contrast. However, automation only picks up certain types of issues, so the majority of the testing was performed manually to identify the more complex usability issues - in particular, keyboard usage and screen reader compatibility using NVDA and JAWs.

As WCAG version 2.1 Level AA was chosen for the audit, this meant that 50 criteria had to be tested against. All observations against each criterion were noted and used as a basis for the next step – writing up an accessibility report. The report was then looked over by a Blue Frontier UX designer, who was able to list a few quick fixes to improve the overall compliance.

The result of the audit found that software was partially compliant to WCAG 2.1 Level AA. All the findings from the audit, both positive and negative, were recorded in an accessibility report which was sent to the client. The report provided a list of how the software could be improved to increase compliance. An Accessibility Statement was also written based on the findings, which the client has since added to their website.