Answer: Accessibility Compliance means the standards or guidelines designed for various digital services such as websites or web applications, mobiles and desktop applications, digital documents etc. to make those digital services accessible for persons with disabilities. There are several national and international accessibility standards and guidelines available based on geographies and technologies such as Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), Government of India Guidelines for Web accessibility (GIGW), Section 508 of US Rehabilitation Act mandatory by Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), EN301459 of European Union, Microsoft Accessibility Standards, Adobe Accessibility Standards, Android Accessibility Guides, iOS Human Interaction Accessibility Guides etc.

Answer: It depends on the country’s legal requirements, e.g. it is mandatory in India as per RPWD act 2016, and Mandatory in USA as per ADA. Compliances are desirable in some countries.

Answer: It depends on the organization's requirements. If an organization needs to adhere to only one accessibility compliance then they should go for only one that is mandatory by law. If the organizations are doing e-commerce business and wish to attract more customers, then they may choose multiple compliances which will fulfil their users requirement.

Answer: The accessibility compliance covers accessibility for all the people regardless of physical ability. However it will be more beneficial for persons with all kinds of disabilities including visual impairment, auditory and speech impairment, Motor and cognitive disabilities as well as people with ageing disabilities.

Answer: There are several benefits of making website accessibility compliant.

1. It increases website usage that helps to improve customer base.
2. Search Engine optimization can be achieved.
3. Cross browser and Cross device compatibility can be achieved.
4. Creates good will in society and helps for Social connect.
5. Avoids legal penalties due to non-compliance.

Answer: The first step is to understand the meaning and purpose of accessibility compliance and make a decision to adapt any specific compliance that will fulfil the exact accessibility requirement of your organization.

Answer:

1. Understand accessibility requirements of your organization from the web or from any accessibility expert.
2. Gain basic knowledge of accessibility compliance for persons with disabilities.
3. Decide to adapt specific accessibility compliance as per your organizational requirement.
4. Appoint certified access auditor for your organization to conduct access audit of your website or mobile application.
5. Remediate the website as per the recommendations of access audit with the help of your website development vendor or access auditor. Self declared that your website is compliant in a standard format or get the compliance certificate from your certified access auditor or any other certifying agency.
6. Sign a contract of accessibility compliance maintenance with the access auditor for your organization.
7. Develop Accessibility policy for your organization.

Answer: It depends on the size and complexity of the website/Web applications. Generally, a website/web application with 100 Web pages requires 3 to 4 weeks’ time for access audit and complete remediation.

Answer: If we are considering accessibility compliance right from the beginning of the website development, then it does not require much budget. Otherwise it will be a little more costly as some time accessibility remediation requires much effort.

Answer: Generally it takes around 25 to 30 % of the total expenditure of the website development which involves access audit and complete remediation as per adapted accessibility compliance. For non-profit organizations, our charges are very nominal that may reduce the budget.

Answer: Generally vendors who have expertise in website development have little knowledge of accessibility compliance as it is a niche area. It is best to involve organizations having accessibility experts with disabilities who are certified accessibility professionals and get the website accessibility compliant.

Answer: Yes we have expertise in mobile app accessibility in Android and iOS environments.

Answer: Yes, we have documents accessibility experts who can assist you in making your organizational documents accessibility compliant.

Answer: Yes we can make accessible books in DAISY and EPub format.

Answer: Yes we conduct training on web, Mobile and document accessibility. So far we have conducted 40+ training programs in government and corporate organizations.

Answer: Yes we provide accessibility engineers for a short period of time from 3 to 9 months duration on our payroll. These engineers can work at the client location and the client has to pay us.

Answer: We have expertise of 1 to 10 years of experience. Most of them are internationally certified accessibility testers.

Answer: For Semi automated accessibility evaluation; ANDI, Color Contrast Analyser, WAVE, A-Checker, AXE, FAE etc. For Manual Testing; Screen Readers like JAWS, NVDA, VoiceOver, ORCA, Magnifiers like Browser content magnification facilities, ZoomText, Magic Magnifier etc., Devices like Keyboard, Mouse, Touch screens etc.

Answer: Considering different user requirements, we have designed 4 different combinations of accessibility test environments for web applications.

1. Windows, Google Chrome, NVDA or JAWS, Android Chrome and Talkback.
2. Windows, Internet explorer, JAWS, Android Chrome and Talkback.
3. Windows, Firefox, NVDA or Android, Firefox Talkback.
4. Mac, Safari, Voiceover, iOS Safari, Voiceover.

Clients can choose any of the combinations of test environments for access audit. Costing for each of the 4 test environments are the same. Clients can also go for multiple combinations of test environments for better accessibility.

Answer: There are several semi-automatic evaluation tools available. Some are browser extensions, some are web based and some are stand alone tools. However, these tools have limited accuracy. (Up to 40 to 50 percent). These tools can be helpful for access audit. But one cannot replace manual accessibility by semi-automatic accessibility evaluation tools. The manual accessibility evaluation involves assistive technologies like screen readers and screen magnifiers, speech recognition software, Devices like keyboard, mouse and touch screen testing etc. as it is recommended in the standard access audit procedure.

Answer: We follow a combination of Manual as well as semi-automated evaluation. Manual evaluation is done by a group of 2 people viz 1. Assistive Technology Tester (AT) who is accessibility expert and end user with disabilities and 2. Functional Tester (FT) who is a UI technology expert preferably a person without disabilities.

Answer: Generally on an average it takes 2 to 2.5 hours to evaluate a single web page and to prepare an access audit report with technical recommendations to remedy the web page. Complex web page with more than 8 to 10 interactive elements might require 4 to 5 hours’ time and a simple static web page sometimes takes only 45 minutes to 1-hour time.

Answer: It depends on client requirements.

1. Usually we conduct access audits, provide recommendations to remedy the issues in the access audit report and technical support to the client’s website development team for fixing the issues until remediation.
2. If required we conduct only access audits and provide Access audit reports as per specific accessibility compliance.
3. We also provide complete accessibility compliance that involves Access audit and remedy the website from our Web developers. In this case the Client organization has to share source code to our Web development team.

Answer: The typical access audit report is prepared in spreadsheets such as MS Excel or Google Spreadsheet. The general access audit report has following:

1. Serial number.
2. Intent of the checkpoint.
3. Accessibility Test.
4. Test result.
5. Issue description.
6. Recommendations for Fixing issues.
7. Actuals.
8. Disability affected.
9. General observations.
10. Test URL.

Beside these, the report also has auditor name, adapted compliance, test environment details, local and global issues etc.