Maintaining your site’s accessibility well after launch

Introduction

Accessibility is one of the key factors to consider while building a website and even after the website launch. While building a website, it should be made sure that the site meets accessibility standards and that third-party tools and integrations are compliant with accessibility standards. After launching the website, it is crucial to maintain the site's accessibility, which can be achieved in different ways, like regular site audits, checking compliance with new updates, and more. Read further to learn about the different ways of maintaining a site's accessibility in detail. 

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Building accessible websites

A website should be compliant with well-known, commonly recognized accessibility standards like Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), standards issued under the ADA, and more. Complying with the accessibility standards is crucial in terms of legal aspects and to ensure that the site is accessible to people of different abilities. To build a website with better accessibility, numerous aspects like the site’s compatibility with assistive technologies, proper use of semantic HTML elements, media accessibility, color contrast, accessibility of input forms and more should be kept in mind.

While checking the compliance of different website components, it is also important to check the accessibility compliance of various third-party tools and integrations involved. 

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Different ways to maintain accessibility

Regular audits and site evaluation

Checklist representing accessibility audit

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Accessibility audits at regular intervals (quarterly, biannually, and annually) are important to check the website’s accessibility status. It helps to ensure the site’s compliance with the accessibility standards to identify any accessibility issues that arise due to changes after the last audit.

Along with the audit, it is also important to develop a remediation plan to determine the issue prioritization, timeline for fixes, and ongoing tracking and documentation to make use of every audit effectively.

Audits can be performed with the help of site monitoring tools for accessibility like Siteimprove, Monsideo, etc.,

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Ensuring compliance of updates

A website may undergo different types of changes like design, functionalities, etc., during different times of the year. Making sure the section that changes are compliant with the accessibility standards is key to maintaining the site’s accessibility and reducing the team’s workload during regular accessibility audits.

Establishing an accessibility review process can help assess accessibility after each update systematically without overlooking accessibility irrespective of the significance of each update. Involving each change or update for pre-accessibility tests can be an added advantage.

In addition to this, maintaining a library of accessible components can significantly speed up the whole process and reduce workload during every update.

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Monitoring and assistive tools

There are numerous tools available in the market for monitoring a website’s accessibility as a whole, like Siteimprove, to test sites completely, like AXE, and to test different aspects of a site, like color contrast for visual accessibility, like the WebAIM contrast checker, assistive technology simulators like the NoCoffee Vision simulator to check the site's compatibility with them, and to aid in website design, like the Stark plugin for Figma. 
Tools are also available for accessibility testing for specialized cases, such as testing the compatibility of assistive tools in multilingual sites.

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Being informed of changes in standards

Accessibility guidelines like Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), Section 508, and more evolve to ensure users with various abilities can access information and services on the web without any disparity for better inclusivity. For example, WCAG 1.0, first published in 1999, underwent considerable revision till 2018, when WCAG 2.1 was released, while expecting WCAG 2.2 in 2024.

Staying up to date with the changes in the standards and ensuring compliance with the new standards will help maintain or improve the site’s accessibility status. 

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Conclusion

Maintaining the accessibility of a website after launch is as important as ensuring compliance with accessibility standards while building it. Accessibility can be overlooked with various updates and changes in a website throughout the year. We’ve detailed multiple ways in which accessibility can be maintained on a site from having a dedicated remediation plan, and regular accessibility audits to staying in line with the ever-evolving accessibility guidelines.

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