How to Prioritize Accessibility Issues on Your Website

Website accessibility is crucial for inclusion, usability, and reaching your entire audience, going beyond mere compliance. While identifying numerous accessibility errors can feel overwhelming (WebAIM found an average of 51 on top website homepages), knowing how to prioritize web accessibility issues is key to creating an inclusive and user-friendly site. A strategic approach ensures you tackle the most impactful barriers first, improving accessibility for all users efficiently.

A Step-by-Step Guide to Prioritization:

1. Begin with a Basic Assessment: Conduct an initial audit using resources like the W3C WAI Preliminary Evaluation Guide. Focus on manual checks for fundamental barriers such as keyboard navigation, image text alternatives, page structure, and color contrast. This helps identify easily fixable, high-impact issues.
2. Integrate Automated Tools: Utilize automated testing tools such as WAVE, axe, Insi, (ask us about this!) and Lighthouse to detect common issues like missing alt text, incorrect heading structure, ARIA misuse, and insufficient contrast. Remember that these tools catch only about 30% of potential problems, making manual testing and user feedback vital. The W3C WAI Tools List offers a comprehensive selection.
3. Categorize and Prioritize Identified Issues: Avoid fixing everything at once. Instead, classify issues based on their severity and impact on users:

• High Priority (Severe Impact): Address immediately, especially on high-traffic pages. These prevent access to key content or functionality and include issues like unusable interactive elements (buttons, forms, links via keyboard), missing or incorrect form labels, content inaccessible to screen readers, and navigation traps.
• Medium Priority (Moderate Impact): Schedule for upcoming updates. These degrade the user experience but do not block access. Examples include poor color contrast, improper heading levels, and confusing link text.
• Low Priority (Minor or Cosmetic Issues): Address during ongoing maintenance. These are often enhancements like decorative images lacking alt attributes, redundant ARIA roles, or minor semantic markup issues.

4. Consider Scope and Frequency: Evaluate how widespread and frequent an issue is. Does it affect core pages or multiple components? Does it impact mobile and desktop users differently? Fixing reusable elements like headers and navigation can yield significant improvements efficiently.
5. Integrate Accessibility into Your Ongoing Workflow: Accessibility is not a one-time task but a continuous effort. Implement accessibility checks in QA and code reviews, provide regular team training, use automated scans with each deployment, and actively seek feedback from users, particularly those with disabilities.

In Conclusion:

Effectively prioritizing web accessibility issues involves a systematic process of initial evaluation, utilizing automated tools, categorizing by severity and impact, considering scope, and integrating accessibility into your development lifecycle. This approach ensures continuous improvement, creating a more inclusive and user-friendly website for everyone. Accessibility is fundamentally about respect, equity, and equal access to information and opportunity.