How to conduct an accessibility audit

Prerequisites

Before starting your audit, you should ensure the following statements are true:

• A relevant GitHub issue has been created for this audit, and it is attached to the WCAG 2.1 auditing tracking issue.
• The user journey you are about to audit feels appropriately scoped.
  • Example: Instead of auditing the entirety of code insights, the audit should be focused on a specific part, such as creating a new code insight.
• You have read and understood How to use a screen reader.

If you run into any problems, please contact the Frontend Platform team.

Auditing a user journey

1. Navigate through the journey using only the tab key.
   • Ensure that you are able to access all important actions.
   • Ensure that the current focus position is always clear and visible.
2. Enable a screen reader. Navigate through the user journey without looking at your screen.
   • Would a user be able to understand the content of the journey?
   • Would a user be able to correctly and predictably perform each important action?
   • Note: Use the cheatsheet in How to use a screen reader to help you navigate.
3. Navigate through the user journey using a viewport that has a width of 320px.
   • Would a user be able to sufficiently read all required content in the journey?
   • Would a user be able to correctly and predictably perform each important action?
     • Keep in mind that it is typically harder to select small buttons and icons using a touch device.
   • Note: You don't need to use a physical mobile device to test this. Most browsers support emulating a mobile viewport - just ensure it is set to 320px.
     • Chrome documentation
     • Firefox documentation
4. Work through relevant sections from the detailed checklist and ensure that there are no issues.

Raising a bug

If the bug is very small, and you are confident you can quickly fix it - then go ahead and make a PR! If you aren't able to immediately address the bug, then you should create a new GitHub issue using the following steps:

1. Open this GitHub Issue template
   • Provide as much detail as possible about the bug you found, and the behavior you expected to happen.
   • Make sure that anyone reading the issue would be able to reproduce the behavior. Screenshots, URLs or videos are helpful!
2. The issue will be automatically added to the WCAG 2.1 Tracking Issue and the Accessibility project on GitHub.
3. If your team has capacity to address the issue, then please assign yourself to it.
   • The Frontend Platform team will triage any unassigned issues and either fix them or assign them to one of our external contractors.

Note: If you created an issue without using the issue template above, please add the following GitHub labels to your issue to ensure we can still track it: accessibility, wcag/2.1, wcag/2.1/fixing.

If you run into any problems, please contact the Frontend Platform team.