Frequent questions

Accessibility touches several crafts, from project management and design through to front-end, editorial and quality assurance. Training that tries to serve all of them at once stays on the surface everywhere.

That is why I cut my workshops to the craft in the room: design, editorial, front-end and project management. And when design and editorial sit down at one table, I put together something that fits that too.

For a relaunch, auditing the existing site is usually wasted money – the findings describe something that is about to disappear.

1. Write the requirements down early, so they are in the tender and the offer rather than added at the end.
2. Enable the team before building – half a day of workshop saves weeks of rework.
3. Test before launch, while things can still change.

There are certificates for people and certificates for websites.

For people

I am a certified web accessibility expert (External link, opens in a new window) listed with incite, the certification body of the Austrian Economic Chamber. Alongside that there are further accessibility certifications from the IAAP (External link, opens in a new window).

For websites: WACA

For that, Austria has the WACA certificate – Web Accessibility Certificate Austria (External link, opens in a new window). It was developed in Austria and is recognised internationally. Your website goes through an accessibility audit and is awarded a certification seal if there are no serious accessibility violations.

• „Do you test by hand or only with tools?" Automated testing finds 30 to 40 per cent of barriers.
• „Do you test the whole checkout?" In a shop, everything is decided between basket and confirmation.
• „Which law applies to me?" The person should know the legal situation that applies – which laws cover which country. Austria has BaFG and WZG.

First, because nobody else says it: „legally sound" as a guarantee does not exist. No authority issues a clean bill of health, and even a certificate does not prevent a complaint. What counts is a documented state and a documented improvement.

No problem – and you will usually get more than you asked for.

WCAG 2.2 contains all of 2.1. Nine criteria were added and only one removed (4.1.1 Parsing, which counts as always met for HTML). Meeting 2.2 AA means meeting 2.1 AA.

Tenders often still say 2.1 because the EN 301 549 standard lags behind. I test against 2.2 by default and mark in the report which findings already fall under 2.1 – so you can evidence both without paying twice.

Because both need the same things. A search engine is essentially a user who cannot see: it reads structure, text and markup – exactly what a screen reader reads.

On conversion the link is more direct: 69% of disabled people click away when a site becomes difficult – but only 8% tell the site owner. A checkout that cannot be finished with a keyboard looks like an ordinary abandoned basket. The figures, with sources.

• Web implementation – I build the site, accessible from the first sketch.
• Accessibility audit – testing with a report, prioritisation and a retest.
• Workshops – so your team can do it themselves next time.