The question is, what constitutes an accessible website?
While there is no direct answer to that question, one of two
main guidelines are referenced in most settlements: Section 508
and WCAG 2.0. Both of these are commonly used as benchmarks
for accessibility.
Section 508 requires that Federal agencies’ electronic and
information technology is accessible to people with disabilities.
As a result, the U.S. Federal Government requires that web and
digital products they purchase comply with Section 508 standards.
WCAG 2.0 are the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines pub-
lished by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). They are
divided into A, AA, and AAA levels. A is the easiest to adhere
to and AAA the hardest. They are a worldwide set of guidelines
adopted as a standard by many countries and are standards put
in place by the International Organization of Standards.
Many accessibility consultants recommend that businesses that
are working to make their website accessible use the WCAG 2.0
Level A and AA standards, as it will not only cover the relevant parts
of section 508, but goes a step further. They are the most widely
accepted standards worldwide, and they are the best benchmark
for what is soon expected to become the standard in the United
States. Companies that meet the WCAG 2.0 standards will likely
need to make little or no changes to remain compliant with the
Section 508 standards, when they refresh in the near future.
The challenge comes in implementing the standards. Most
banks have large, sophisticated websites that have been developed over time and are comprised of custom code written by
their developers, and third party tools that have been integrated
to deliver major aspects of the site’s functionality. This leaves
three main steps management must take to address the risk and
move toward and maintain an accessible web presence: assess,
remediate and integrate.
Assess
There are several third party tools designed to assess the accessibility of a website. Companies often use these tools in a first attempt
at assessing the site, but in fact they catch less than thirty percent
of the accessibility errors. Assessing accessibility requires a great
deal of human judgment that cannot be accounted for by a tool.
For example, one simple but important aspect of accessibility is
the inclusion of alternative text for images. This is important for
many reasons, one being that when an individual who is blind is
using a screen reader to read the content on the site aloud, they
can only perceive the contextual significance of an image if that
image has an accurate text equivalent. A tool can tell you whether
there is alternative text associated with the image, but not if that
text is appropriate.
A manual audit by a qualified firm will give you an accurate
picture of the accessibility issues on the website. The typical
approach is to audit a representative sample of pages. This sam-
pling should include pages on your site that represent the major
interactions, technologies, and types of content on the site. It is
important to work closely with the accessibility consultant to
determine the best pages to manually audit. Many accessibility
firms will provide you with good reports that point out the viola-
tions. However, the better reports will prioritize those issues, rate
their level of difficulty, and provide recommendations and code
examples for fixing the issues. These actionable assessments are
the ones needed to plan and execute the remediation of a product.
The landscape of today’s web demands that we pay close at-
tention to the way customers are interacting with our Internet
presence on their mobile devices. This in turn demands that we
focus some of the attention we give to accessibility on our mobile
presence. Mobile devices offer people freedom and convenience
in a way the world has never experienced. People with disabilities
are using mobile devices in countless ways to enhance their lives
and assist them with everyday tasks. The banking industry has put
mobile access on the front line of banking convenience. While this
is exciting, it can be frustrating for the disabled to discover that they
doesn’t have access to this banking convenience on a reliable device.
If the bank has a separate site for mobile devices, that site must
be audited as well. The good news is, most organizations have
moved to responsive design for their main website, which allows
the site to adjust itself to the screen it is presenting on. This has
eliminated the need for a dedicated mobile site and in the case of
an accessibility audit, a second audit. It is important, however, that
mobile testing is included in the audit. The site is tested on select
mobile devices to ensure people with disabilities can access the
site with the device. Moreover, many mobile platforms come with
assistive technologies such as screen readers built in. It is, therefore,
important to make sure they work well on the responsive site.
Mobile banking doesn’t always stop at the website. Many cus-
tomers are interacting with their bank via a downloadable app,
with functionality that is proprietary to their bank. If your bank
is offering apps, you’ll need to include them in the audit. WCAG
2.0 applies to applications as well as web content.
Remediate
With a good, actionable audit, with a prioritized list of issues,
the development team can plan an approach and begin to make
changes to the site immediately. It is important that a road map
is created, based on the priorities, that allows the issues to be
phased in over time, and it should first address the issues with
greatest impact on site accessibility. Some of these high priority
changes can make a big difference for someone with a disability.
Most developers today aren’t intimately familiar with accessibility development techniques. Therefore, even with specific
examples and code snippets in the audit report, the development
team will need assistance from experts to implement all the changes
indicated by the audit. Your institution may find it beneficial during this phase to partner with the accessibility consulting firm so
your team can ask questions and get clarification as they work to
fix the violations described in the audit.
Consider the varying roles at your bank that
have a stake in the bank’s web presence. It is
critical that everyone understands accessibility
and their roles in its implementation.
