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Re: Best way to single out 3 to 5 "most accessible" sites out of a list of 60 or so

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From: Steve Green
Date: Jan 10, 2013 7:44PM

That's quite a challenge. Although the home pages are important, I would not rely on just testing them because they are often unique and totally unrepresentative of the rest of the website. I would therefore recommend assessing 3 to 5 pages per site.

As a sighted user it is easy for me to scan a few pages in a few seconds and pick out features that are likely to cause accessibility barriers. As a screen reader user it would take you much longer to do that, so I agree that you would need to use an automated tool unless you can get someone to identify potential issues for you to assess.

You then run into the problem that the tools often give false positives so you have quite a bit of verification to do. Even if the results are correct, how do you compare them? Simply adding up the number of non-compliances and picking the 5 sites with the lowest scores is pretty crude.

This sounds like one to two days' work, and there is a significant risk of recommending sites that are unworthy, and vice versa. Personally, I would probably decline to do this on the terms you have described unless I could get help from other people. I would offer to assess a few sites but my Icelandic is rather poor.

Steve Green

-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED> [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Sent: 11 January 2013 02:20
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: [WebAIM] Best way to single out 3 to 5 "most accessible" sites out of a list of 60 or so

Hey gang

I know, I am usually not a frequent poster, but a new year brings interesting challenges, especially when you are pretty much the only accessibility person in a country like Iceland (I actually live in the U.S. but it is a long story).

I was sent an email today. The Icelandic Web professionals association is having a big award ceremony on February the 8th, where they present awards in several categories (most innovative website, most user-friendly, coolest design etc.).
The shortlist consists of around 60 websites.
This year they want to draw attention to the need for accessibility, so they asked me if I could select the most accessible web, or a web worth an accessibility award, out of that group.
Iceland has agreed to adopt the WCAG 2.0 AA compliance level by 2015.

I have used various toolbars and online accessibility testing tools and such, and would know what to do for one or two websites with complete accessibility evaluation.
But I have never before been presented with the prospect of evaluating
60 websites in a short time.
My thought is that the nly achievable (though not ideal) way would be to use an online accessibility checker on the site's front pages, WCAG
2.0 AA level.
Out of that experiment, take the 5 or so highest scores, and evaluate the accessibility of these in more detail, through a combination of manual testing and testing tools (including some of the most popular sub pages).
If anyone has an idea, thought or recommendation to shre with me, I would highly appreciate it.
I have to decide in a matter of days whether I can do this job, i.e.
whether this award can be presented.
I even get to meet the president of Iceland (ok, Ihave met him at a grocery store, it is that kind of country).
Cheers and thanks to all, especiallly those who give me a clue as to what to do.
-B