The Accessibility Categories

When we open a website to look at it, we're not checking one thing called accessibility. We're working through a handful of distinct categories, each with its own kinds of failure. Once you can see the categories, the whole subject stops feeling vague and starts feeling like a checklist. Here's the map we use.

Everything sorts into four big buckets. Accessibility people call them perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust. Don't worry about memorizing the words. Care about what each one asks.

Perceivable: can people take the information in?

This is about whether the content reaches every sense it needs to. The things we look at here:

• Images: does every meaningful image have a text description, and are decorative ones marked so screen readers skip them?
• Colour contrast: is the text readable against its background, or is it thin grey on white?
• Text over photos: does the text stay readable across the whole image, including the bright parts?
• Media: do videos have captions, and is there a transcript for audio?
• Colour as meaning: is anything communicated by colour alone, like a red field with no words?

Operable: can people actually drive it?

This is about whether someone can use the controls, however they interact with a page. What we check:

• Keyboard access: can you reach and use every menu, button, link, and field with the keyboard alone?
• Visible focus: can you always see where you are as you tab through?
• No traps: does anything grab the keyboard and refuse to let go, like a pop up you can't tab out of?
• Motion: is anything that auto plays or loops pausable, and does nothing flash rapidly?
• Time and targets: are timeouts fair, and are buttons big enough to hit?

Understandable: does it behave the way people expect?

This is about whether the site is predictable and clear. What we look at:

• Labels: does every field say what it wants, in words that stay put?
• Consistency: is the navigation in the same place and order across pages?
• Language and reading level: is the writing clear enough to follow?
• Errors: when something goes wrong, does the site say what and how to fix it?

Robust: does it work with assistive technology?

This is the under the hood category, about whether the code speaks properly to tools like screen readers. What we check:

• Semantic markup: are headings, lists, buttons, and landmarks real, not just styled to look the part?
• Names, roles, and states: does a custom control tell assistive tech what it is and whether it's open, checked, or selected?
• Compatibility: does the page hold up in a screen reader, not just in a sighted browser?

Each of these categories has its own deeper article in the accessibility lane, from alt text to contrast to keyboard access to forms to motion to headings. Think of this page as the table of contents. And the audit is where we go through every category, on your actual site, and tell you exactly which checks pass and which don't.