Testing

When building a digital product, in this instance a website, get in the habit of testing as you go along. It doesn’t take very long and once you get in the habit of doing so, it just feels natural and you won’t have to go back and rewrite it later.

You never add accessibility to a site at a later date. You rewrite the site and do it properly. What’s the point? Do it right first time.

Testing tools

If you use Chrome, go to Audits (this used to be called Lighthouse before it was baked into the browser) and run an audit. This will audit your site and give you an accessibility score. Never accept anything less that 100/100. This isn’t the be-all-and-end-all of accessibility. With this score, you have something to build on.

Every time you view a change or update to your site, check that every element can be tabbed with the tab key. It is essential that this works. If it doesn’t, stop and fix it. Don’t pile more code on top of a broken page. Make it a part of your work ethic and you will save loads of time later on.