Join Natalie and Natalie for the sixth episode of the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast, where they go over how to hire professional accessibility auditors. This includes what to know, how the process works, and also red flags and ways to vet for hiring accessibility auditors.
Natalie Garza: Hello, everybody. Welcome to the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast. This is our sixth episode. I’m your host, Natalie G. I’m an, uh, how do you say?
Natalie MacLees: A novice?
Natalie Garza: Novice.
And here with me today is—
Natalie MacLees: Natalie MacLees, accessibility expert. I’ve been working in the accessibility field for over 20 years.
Natalie Garza: Yes, and thank you for joining us today. We have an exciting topic. Um, we’ve kind of been building out for the last two episodes. And this week’s episode is hiring somebody for a site audit. So, Natalie, do you want to walk us through all the important notes and all the important things we need to know when hiring for an accessibility audit?
Natalie MacLees: Sure.
I think the first thing that’s important to note is that doing an audit is often the first step in making sure that your website is more accessible. It’s important to note that doing the audit by itself doesn’t accomplish anything for improving the accessibility of your website.
All you do in an audit is look at your website and find all of the accessibility issues. Then you have a whole other step of remediation to actually get these fixed. The audit is an important first step. So you would want to be clear on: why are you doing the audit?
Presumably, it’s because you want your website to be accessible, but then you also need to know: what exactly does that mean? It might depend on what segment of the market you’re in, what kind of business you own, and which kind of audit—or, like, which kind of accessibility guidelines—are the ones that apply to your website.
If you’re not sure, then WCAG 2.1 or 2.2 AA is always a good baseline because that’s what most of the laws are related to. But you might have a slightly different requirement based on what kind of website you’re dealing with. And then you might also have Section 508 if it’s anything to do with the government.
So you want to be clear on what you’re testing for—which guideline you’re trying to be compliant with. At the end of the audit, you’re just going to get a big list of all of the accessibility issues on your website. Now you’ll know exactly what you need to have fixed. And that’s pretty much the basics of how an audit works.
Natalie Garza: Yes, and the reason you need to know what kind of audit you want to get is because that’s pretty important for who you hire, right?
Natalie MacLees: Yeah. If you are a government agency, then you need to make sure that you’re hiring somebody who’s experienced in doing a Section 508 audit.
Or maybe they, you know—depending on exactly how you’re working and who you work for—maybe they are required to have their Trusted Tester certification, or maybe they’re not. So you would need to know that upfront.
Natalie Garza: Do different auditors focus on different things? Like, for example, if you’re getting your audit for law purposes versus somebody who just wants to audit for their user base—somebody who would really benefit from an accessible website?
Natalie MacLees: Yeah, of course, people have different reasons for wanting to have an accessible website. It’s possible somebody is interested only because they want to comply with laws and avoid having lawsuits.
It’s also possible that they just want to make their website as accommodating as possible. And anywhere in between those two.
If you’re looking at only complying with laws, then you’re just going to be looking at strictly complying with a specific standard. It depends on where you are in the world and which standard applies to you.
If you’re doing it to make your website as accommodating as possible, then you’re probably interested in going a little beyond that baseline of a compliance standard and implementing some things that are known to be best practices in accessibility as well, even though they aren’t specifically outlined in any compliance guideline.
Natalie Garza: And the right auditor will guide you through one or the other—they’ll find different issues, or would they be the same issues?
Natalie MacLees: Well, any of the WCAG issues would always be the same. If you are doing it because you want to be super accommodating, they would find best practice issues, which you wouldn’t necessarily find or flag if you were just doing a strict compliance audit.
Natalie Garza: I see. So it does matter who you hire based on what you’re looking for?
Natalie MacLees: Yeah, it can. It can be really important.
Natalie Garza: As far as the deliverables, what is the typical format for those?
Natalie MacLees: Usually it’s a giant spreadsheet. Most of the time, it’s just a big, huge spreadsheet that has every issue that was found on your website, what page it was found on, a little description about where it is—you know, was it at the top of the page, at the bottom, was it in the sidebar, etc.
And then it will have which rule it’s violating and, hopefully, the recommended fix for the issue as well.
Natalie Garza: Yes. And for the issues—technical issues—is it something like the website owner can do, or does it have to be a developer?
Natalie MacLees: They can fall into a few different categories.
One category would be code issues, where you’d probably want to have a developer take a look at those because they’re going to have to actually change the markup that makes up the page.
Other times, it’s a design issue, where maybe you want to have a designer look at it because maybe there’s not enough color contrast or color is being used in a way that violates some of the rules. So you might want to have a designer look at it first before it goes to a developer.
And then there are also content issues, where, if you’re using some kind of a CMS for websites—which most websites these days use a CMS—maybe that’s something that just anybody who could go in and add or edit content could go in and fix. Like, maybe there’s just an image that they forgot to add alt text to. You don’t need a developer to do that kind of thing.
The CMS tool should let you go ahead and go in and do that in a, you know, pretty easy-to-use interface.
Natalie Garza: The accessibility issues belong to the whole team, is what you’re saying.
Natalie MacLees: They do belong to the whole team. Accessibility is everyone’s responsibility.
Natalie Garza: Where do we find somebody to audit our websites?
Natalie MacLees: There are some directories online of accessibility professionals. So if you don’t have anybody to make a referral for you, that would be a good place to get started. I know IAAP maintains a directory, and there are a few others as well.
That would be a good place to get started. There are accessibility communities online where accessibility professionals hang out. You can always go in there, ask around, or you could get recommendations from somebody else who’s had an audit done or had an accessible website built or anything like that.
Those are often the best ways to get them. If you know somebody who hired someone to do it previously and they were happy with them, that’s always a good place to find a recommendation.
Natalie Garza: Right. For the communities, would you say like Reddit?
Natalie MacLees: There is an accessibility subreddit that is decent. I do see people in there occasionally asking for some help.
I would be careful, of course, with just a public forum like that. I’d be careful with who you hire. You want to make sure that you vet them, check their references. You can always ask for a sample of a previous audit they did.
If they’re concerned about privacy, right, they could just delete the column that has the website URLs in it. That way, you could get a feel for what kind of issues they found and what kind of comments they made on them.
So you’d want to be careful about who you hire, but that’s definitely one place you could find them.
And then there are some more… Reddit is just open to anybody, and anybody can just stumble along and join Reddit. There are some other communities that I think are more professional and more focused on accessibility professionals. You still always, of course, want to be careful and vet who you hire, but I think you could be a little more confident about the people who spoke up in one of those more professional communities.
Natalie Garza: I’ve heard you talk about your accessibility Slack communities. Are those open to the public?
Natalie MacLees: Yeah, the web accessibility Slack that I belong to is the one founded by Marcy Sutton. Unfortunately, they’ve had to close down the public option for joining because they were having some spam issues. But if you know somebody who’s in there, they can invite you directly.
If you just do a random Google search for some accessibility information and find somebody with an accessibility blog, chances are they’re in that community. It’s a pretty robust community with a lot of very recognizable names from the accessibility world.
Natalie Garza: Hmm, I see. So ask for an invite, and they will most likely invite you too. And then you can ask them if they recommend anybody to audit.
Natalie MacLees: Yeah, you can always ask.
For recommendations too, I think especially on LinkedIn, it’s a good place to ask for professional recommendations like that from just your network.
Natalie Garza: You recommend searching on LinkedIn?
Natalie MacLees: You could definitely give it a try. I’ve seen a lot of people have their IAAP certifications as part of their name on LinkedIn. You could even search by one of those specific certifications.
Natalie Garza: So, speaking of certifications, are there any credentials that we should be looking out for when hiring an auditor?
Natalie MacLees: There’s no industry standard for credentials, unfortunately. That would make things really easy, wouldn’t it?
But there are a handful. If you are in a place where you’re working for a government agency and you want to find a Trusted Tester, you would definitely want to look for that Trusted Tester certification in the United States.
You can also look at the IAAP certifications. They’re not perfect, but they’re at least a good indicator that somebody was able to pass a test and has demonstrated at least a good level of knowledge of accessibility.
There’s also the WAI certification. That one, I wouldn’t say, qualifies people to do audits if that’s all they had. But there’s a few of them. I definitely wouldn’t make that a requirement, though, and say, “I’m only going to hire somebody who has this specific certification.” I wouldn’t make that a requirement unless it was a legal one for Trusted Tester.
Natalie Garza: For price ranges for an auditing project, what is the typical range?
Natalie MacLees: It really depends on what kind of website you have and how complex it is. Usually, an auditor is going to look at how many pages your website has and then how complicated they are.
A single page could take anywhere from, say, 15 or 20 minutes if it’s a relatively simple page. It could be audited pretty quickly. For example, if it was just a header, footer, and a paragraph of text, that’s going to go pretty fast, especially if the header and footer are simple.
If it’s a page of a complex web application that has lots of interactive functionality, one or more forms, and all different kinds of interactive elements on it, it could take hours or even multiple days to really get through that and fully test it.
So it’s going to really, really depend on what kind of site you have—if it’s, you know, an application versus a website—and how complex it is. There’s a lot of gray area in there, so there’s a huge wide range of price differences that are going to happen.
It’s a little bit difficult to say, like, “Oh, an audit would typically cost this price,” because it’s just going to really depend. An audit for a five-page informational website that doesn’t have a lot of interactivity is going to be relatively affordable and won’t take very long to do. On the other hand, if you’re trying to audit a huge application with lots of interactivity, that could take weeks or months to finish, and the cost is going to match that effort that is required.
Natalie Garza: Yeah. Would you want to put a price range to that or not really?
Natalie MacLees: I don’t want to, just because I don’t want people to hear a number and then think, “Oh, it’s just going to cost this much when I get my audit,” and then they’re going to get very different information from a professional once they talk to them. It’s got to be on a really case-by-case basis.
Natalie Garza: Yeah. Do auditors have different rates?
Natalie MacLees: Of course. Yeah. And you know, there are auditors in all different parts of the world. So, if cost is a concern for you, you could look at hiring somebody in an area with a lower cost of living because their rate is, of course, going to be lower than if you hire somebody in a higher cost-of-living area.
It’s one of the advantages of having a worldwide market available for us—you can look around and find people.
Sometimes, everyone is different, and sometimes people really value being able to meet in person with somebody and to work with them in a very hands-on and close manner. And sometimes, that’s what people really value—they’re willing to pay extra money to have somebody who’s, you know, in their own city, for example, doing work for them.
And other people care less about that and are perfectly fine hiring somebody on the other side of the world to do work for them with much less supervision. So it just depends on what you’re comfortable with and what your budget is.
Natalie Garza: Right. So you would say the auditing process can be done completely remotely?
Natalie MacLees: Yeah, there’s nothing about it that requires you to be in person. The only exception would be if you have, like, a—oh, what is it called? When you have a website…
Natalie Garza: Oh, I see.
Natalie MacLees: …that can only be accessed inside your company—an intranet. If you have some kind of intranet or something that’s only available to people who are physically in your office, for example, that would require somebody to be there on-site, or it would require some fancy IT work to get somebody outside the office access to that.
But other than that, if it’s a website that’s live on the internet for anybody to use, anybody can audit it.
Natalie Garza: Okay. Thank you. And I think the last thing I wanted to touch on is a timeline. How long would an audit take, usually?
Natalie MacLees: Yeah, it’s going to go back to what kind of website we’re talking about and how complicated it is. If it’s a really small, simple website, it could be done in a couple of days. If it’s a really huge application, it could take months to do.
In that case, I actually wouldn’t recommend doing a whole audit upfront. If you have a really big application or just a really huge website with thousands of pages, I would recommend doing it in rounds.
Maybe once a month, you’d have an auditor go and spend, you know, 10 or 15 hours. Then you could remediate those issues, and the next month, just do it again until you kind of get through the whole website.
That way, you’re not testing pages, like, if an auditor starts auditing your website in January, and it’s a huge website with thousands of pages, maybe they don’t finish their audit until April or May. Then maybe it’s October or November before a developer is getting to the last of those issues, and maybe those pages aren’t even on the site anymore.
So it can lead to a lot of wasted effort when you try to do a huge, huge audit all in one go.
Natalie Garza: Yeah, so in that case, you would hire somebody to kind of join the team, be a part of the team each week?
Natalie MacLees: Yeah, I’ve just done an ongoing retainer kind of model, which is often what works the best anyway because accessibility isn’t a one-and-done kind of project.
So hiring somebody to do a one-time audit and then a one-time remediation to fix all the issues is not the best solution for most websites anyway.
Natalie Garza: Gotcha. Because even after you do the audit and remediate, it’s still an ongoing process that your team has to contribute to.
Natalie MacLees: Yep. As long as your website is live and as long as content is being added, removed, and edited, you need to be thinking about accessibility. New issues might be getting introduced.
Natalie Garza: Thank you. I have some rapid-fire questions.
Natalie MacLees: Okay.
Natalie Garza: Ready?
Natalie MacLees: Ready.
Natalie Garza: Okay. Red flags when hiring an auditor. Are there any?
Natalie MacLees: Sure. If somebody isn’t able to explain some accessibility requirements to you in a way that you can understand, that’s definitely a red flag. If they’re not willing to provide you with a sample of their previous work, that’s definitely a red flag. If they don’t have any references that you can contact to ask about, that would also be a red flag.
Natalie Garza: Thank you. How do we vet these people we’re hiring?
Natalie MacLees: I would always start by checking references. And I would do my best to actually talk to the reference over the phone to get a feel for how they liked working with the person, how the project went, whether they were happy with the work, and if there were any issues—things like that.
I would always go ahead and do that before hiring somebody for an audit. Asking for samples of previous work is another good place to go.
And then checking, you know, what kind of certifications they have. Though, as I mentioned earlier, I wouldn’t require that, but it can be a nice shortcut if they have them.
Natalie Garza: Do auditors usually have, like, a review page? Do they have, like, a Google business profile?
Natalie MacLees: You know, I don’t think they do, which is kind of unfortunate. They probably should.
Natalie Garza: Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking. Like, maybe a Yelp?
Natalie MacLees: Does that count? No, no, no, no.
Natalie Garza: Accessible, though, so… that might be a little bit of a challenge.
Natalie MacLees: Scratch that. Scratch that.
But you know, they could have a portfolio of previous clients that they worked for, which is also a good thing to check. But you can’t just take somebody’s word for it—you want to actually check with those companies and make sure that this person worked for them and whether they were happy with them.
Natalie Garza: Okay. Do they usually have websites?
Natalie MacLees: Yeah, I would say most accessibility professionals have a personal website.
Natalie Garza: Next, do web agencies do accessibility work?
Natalie MacLees: They might, but not all of them will. Not all of them are going to have somebody on staff who has accessibility experience. But some of them do.
So if you have a web agency that you’ve worked with already, it could be worth checking with them. And even if they don’t have somebody on staff, they may have somebody that they work with and collaborate with on a regular basis.
Natalie Garza: Thank you. How do you prepare for an audit, if anything?
Natalie MacLees: Really, there’s not much for you to do as a website owner to get ready for an audit aside from maybe doing a little bit of research to figure out which guidelines apply to you.
Oops. And it’s not even strictly necessary that you know that because the person you hire should be able to guide you in figuring out which guidelines apply to you.
Natalie Garza: Okay. I think we kind of covered this already. Do you need a follow-up audit?
Natalie MacLees: It’s a good idea because websites change all the time. Plan on doing one on a regular basis.
Exactly how often you do that depends on how big your website is and how often it changes. You might decide that you want to do one every six months, every year, or every other year. I wouldn’t say any less often than every other year.
Then also, you could be in a situation where you have an accessibility professional on retainer anyway, who’s going to be looking at your website every month. In that situation, you have somebody kind of taking a look at everything every month anyway, and that would be good enough.
Natalie Garza: All right. Last question. Should auditors also be responsible for training your website team?
Natalie MacLees: If that’s a service that they offer, that’s something you could definitely do. But not necessarily every auditor is going to offer that service.
They might be able—if they don’t offer it themselves—to refer you to somebody who could come in and offer training for your team. But not all of them would offer that as a service.
Natalie Garza: Okay. I think that wraps up this episode. Thank you so much, Natalie. You are awesome.
Natalie MacLees: You’re pretty awesome too.
Natalie Garza: All right, where can we get started with all this auditing stuff, all this accessibility stuff? Where do we go?
Natalie MacLees: If you want to get a feel for what kind of shape your website is in now, you can test your homepage for free at aaardvarkaccessibility.com.
Natalie Garza: And with that, that is the end of episode six of the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast. Join us next week—next two weeks. Next week is Thanksgiving.
Natalie MacLees: Next week is Thanksgiving, so we’ll take a week off and we’ll be back in two weeks.
Natalie Garza: Yes, but keep an eye out for our shorts, and like and subscribe.
