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Digital Accessibility Validation

Digital Accessibility Validation

Table of Contents

If you haven't already checked out the Digital Accessibility Training Options at PSU, please do so when you have the chance! These resources will provide some context for the digital accessibility validation tools below.

Digital Accessibility Checklists

The digital accessibility checklist you decide to use during the design phase will vary depending on your use case and experience level.

Office of Information Technology (OIT) Managed Checklists

OIT manages and maintains an overarching Accessible Digital Design checklist as well as several supplementary accessible design checklists for common content authoring or management tools:

External Checklists

While developers may find the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)'s How To Meet WCAG (Quick Reference) guide helpful, it can be overwhelming for content creators who have less experience with digital design. With that in mind, Web Accessibility in Mind (WebAIM), Deque University, and Level Access have each developed their own, more digestible resources to support WCAG 2 compliance:

Automated Accessibility Evaluation Tools

There are several free automated evaluation tools available online. Siteimprove is a quality assurance tool that all pdx.edu content managers can access. In addition to measuring general quality assurance by detecting misspellings and broken links, Siteimprove will also test for common accessibility issues like missing alternative text or heading structure. Additionally, you may find the Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool (WAVE) to be helpful.

Please note that automated evaluation tools will only help you locate and repair the most obvious accessibility issues. To ensure WCAG 2 compliance, you must manually validate.

Manual Testing with Adaptive Technology

At minimum, digital resources should be manually tested for keyboard navigability and the accessibility of images, headings, links, media, and color. Ideally, screen reading software should be used to determine whether all functions can be accessed equitably via keyboard. The following are some resources to help you get started:

Niklas Petersson, a native screen reader user from Miles Access Skills Training, created the following short videos to demonstrate how someone who uses screen reading software might access images:

Color Contrast Evaluation Tools

In order to use a color contrast evaluation tool, you will need the hex or RGB key for the background and foreground colors you plan to use. If you are unable to determine this information easily within your content authoring platform, you may use a tool like the ColorZilla Chrome Extension.

Once you have determined the hex or RGB keys, you can use either of the following color contrast ratio checkers to evaluate contrast between background and foreground colors. WCAG 2 guidelines require at least a 4.5:1 contrast ratio. These color contrast checkers will indicate if a specific color combination complies with WCAG 2 Levels A and AA success criteria, at or below size 18 point font.

If you have any additional questions regarding digital accessibility for non-instructional digital resources at PSU, please submit a request for Digital Accessibility Support.

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