Accessibility Issues
Introduction
AAArdvark includes a purpose-built issue management solution to help your team work through remediation tasks easily and efficiently.
You must run a scan on the site you wish to view issues for first, or this menu item will not be accessible.
Basic Concepts
There are a few important concepts to understand before diving into the Issues tab.
Issues
Issues found on your site will always map to a specific WCAG 2.1 Success Criteria. You can think of an issue as a “class of problem”, for example, an insufficient contrast ratio or missing descriptive text.
Instances
An instance is an individual occurrence of an issue on your site. Issues will often have many instances across multiple pages of your site.
We use advanced pattern matching in an attempt to group like issues together. This grouping enables developers to better identify the source template for grouped instances, even if they occur on multiple pages of your site.
Issue Categories
Issues are categorized as either Warnings, Errors, or Notices (if enabled) depending on the compliance level you’ve chosen for the site.
It’s best to address Errors first, as they have the highest impact on your site’s accessibility and generally have the clearest path to a solution.
Accessibility Issues for a Site
After a site scan or manual auditing, discovered issues will be listed under the Issues tab on your Site’s Dashboard.
Filtering Issues
From here, you can search issues, sort and filter issues, and switch to Visual Mode. Let’s go over how each filter works.
Search Issues
Issues can be filtered and searched for by using a search term that is either vague or something that you are specifically looking for. For example, you can search for a specific issue by its success criterion, number, or description.
Sort Issues
Issues can be filtered and sorted by their priority. The choices available are:
- Highest Priority
- Lowest Priority
- Most Severe
- Least Severe
- Newest
- Oldest
Priority is a calculation determined and based on the severity, how urgently the issue needs to be fixed, and how many instances of that issue exist.
Severity
Issues can be filtered by Severity, all of which is determined by the impact the issue has on the site users. The choices available are:
- All
- Critical
- Very High
- High
- Moderate
- Low
- Warning
Type
The Type dropdown can be used to filter issues depending on whether they were caught in an Automatic scan, or added as a manual issue. The choices available are:
- All
- Automatic
- Manual
Status
Issues can be sorted by Status, whether they are active, resolved, or not an issue. This allows users to discern what issues need resolving and are already resolved. The choices available are:
- All
- Active
- Resolved
- Not an Issue
Assigned To
To find out which issues are assigned to certain assignees, the Assigned To filter will allow users to select which assignee they want to filter by. Issues that have been assigned to other Workspace users will appear under the filter. If they have not been assigned to anyone, they will remain under the Unassigned filter.
The choices available are:
- Anyone
- Assigned to me
- Unassigned
Success Criteria
Issues can be sorted by WCAG Success Criteria. Depending on the Success Criteria of issues captured on the site, either through automatic or manual audits, these criteria will be listed out on the dropdown to use as filters.
Pages
The Pages filter can be utilized to view the list of issues for specific pages or for the overall site. This makes it so that users can see what issues have been found on certain pages and address them individually.
Issue Details
From the Issues List, you can click on an individual item to see the detail view. There you will see:
- A description of the issue. Most issues will also have a detailed summary, recommendations, and an example.
- The current assignee.
- A list of all instances of this issue across your site.
- Comments that have been made on this issue.
- Status of the issue, this could be Active, Resolved, or Not an Issue.
Use the Previous Issue and Next Issue arrow buttons at the top of the page to navigate between the Issue Detail pages.
Assigning Issues
Issues can be assigned to a user on your team to help coordinate responsibilities between team members.
To assign an issue from the issue page, click Change Assignee, select a User from the list, and click Update.
Issue Status
The current status is visible in the top right and is one of Active, Resolved (pending scan or review), Resolved, or Not an Issue. Clicking on the issue will display a drop-down that will update the issue status.
- Active: At least one instance of the issue was seen in the most recent scan and is not ignored.
- Resolved (pending scan or review): A user has Resolved the issue, but it is pending confirmation on the next scan or manual review.
- Resolved: The most recent scan saw zero instances of the issue.
- Not an Issue: The issue has been flagged to be ignored, and will not be set to Active if instances are seen in a scan.
- Delete: If the issue was manually recorded by a user, the issue can be deleted by an Administrator, Project Manager, or Accessibility Tester.
Resolving Issues
You can also set the status of an entire issue to fixed by choosing Resolve in the status drop-down on the top right of the issue page.
If any instances of these issues are seen in a subsequent scan, the issue will be reopened for you to take another look.
Marking Instances as Fixed
Once you have resolved an instance, you can click the Mark as Fixed button to mark it as fixed. The fix will be confirmed during the next scan of the site or through manual review.
If an instance marked as fixed is seen in a subsequent scan, it will be labeled as Reopened for you to take another look. When all instances are confirmed fixed or marked as not an issue, the issue will be automatically set as resolved.
Commenting on Issues or Instances
Add a comment to issues or Instances by clicking on the Comments tab.
@mentions are supported to tag a team member in a comment. Only members of the Team(s) corresponding with the site can be tagged in comments.
False Positives
Automated scanning is never perfect, and there are ambiguous situations that cannot be confirmed programmatically.
After reviewing an issue manually, if you are confident it’s a false positive, you can mark it as not an issue and it will be removed from the active list.
