Accessibility Evaluation

As part of my expert accessibility review of the Stemettes website, I found several key accessibility issues that could be improved to make the website more inclusive for users with different needs.

Numerous issues were found and reported during the evaluation process, including issues with contrast, labelling, structure, etc. The website was tested using a variety of techniques which are easy checks, WAVE, VoiceOver, Keyboard, and through coding. These techniques assisted in locating elements on the website that are incompatible with WCAG 2.1 and the Autism Accessibility Guidelines (AAG). 

Once the testing was completed, different personas were selected from the UK government website, W3 and Rosenfeld to represent the users with disabilities. These personas included two personas with vision impairments, one persona was a deaf person, two personas were chosen for cognitive impairments including autism and down syndrome and the last persona was a user with rheumatoid arthritis. Afterward, these personas were linked to the issues to see how these users would be impacted when they will use the website. 

The STEMETTS developer team must act quickly to solve some of the issues that were found because they prevented people with impairments from accessing information. While in other cases, the users may and can complete the task, but it requires effort. In some cases, users’ disabilities can be a barrier to using the website. Therefore, these problems were considered imperative and high-level problems. Issues that caused frustration to users were given moderate and low priority.

Solving these issues could be through following WCAG 2.1 and AAG guidelines as well as involving users with disabilities in the process of development so they can express their needs.