SiteImprove Accessibility Checker

Siteimprove is a robust, accurate, automated accessibility checker with excellent reporting features that lets users check rigorously against the A, AA, and AAA levels of the World Accessibility Content Guidelines (WCAG). The accessibility scanner is one of the tools offered by Siteimprove, a leading SaaS company with over seventeen years of expertise.

Not to be mixed up, the title ‘Siteimprove’ simultaneously refers to the parent organization and its suite of website solutions. As a brand, Siteimprove offers a wide range of web-related services, including accessibility compliance, search engine optimization, web security, data privacy, online ads, quality assurance, and overall website optimization. Siteimprove, as a software, is built on a robust system called the Digital Certainty Index, which is a conglomerate of elements that indicate website success. The DCI (Digital Certainty Index) scores website performance against over a hundred checkpoints under three broad categories: Accessibility, Quality Assurance, and SEO. Today we go over what you need to know about SiteImprove Web Accessibility checker.

Siteimprove is an automated accessibility scanner that allows users to conduct automatic and semi-automatics. Similar to many other automated checkers, such as aCe, Siteimprove enables you to test your compliance status through its online software. From the demo we conducted, the testing procedure is straightforward and swift.

Siteimprove free accessibility scan comes with no strict formalities. All you need to provide is your name and website address. And, the highest time it took to run a scan was under thirty seconds. We could infer that Siteimprove, like aCe, tests only your homepage in the free check. As a result, the free scan was pretty quick. The free audit was done against 15 accessibility checks. Although both aCe and Siteimprove operate as automated compliance tools, there are apparent differences between them. aCe is free, though the scan is limited to homepage check, while Siteimprove could audit an entire website but checks only the homepage in its free version. Also, aCe’s function is limited to web audit, and nothing more. On the other hand, Siteimprove scans and provides for remediation.

Built with experts and non-experts in mind, Siteimprove simplifies the process and product of each compliance evaluation. The audit report is issued in plain as well as graphical terms. This is in addition to pinpointing issues to page and code-level so that you can locate them without much trouble. Perhaps like other systems we have seen, Siteimprove prioritizes problems in order of their severity to enable you to focus on the most critical aspects of the report.

The accessibility platform requires users to create an account through which they gain access to a personalized dashboard. This tool is for accessibility audit, report, remediation, and monitoring. Remember that one of the geniuses of this web-optimization brand is giving details in customized forms, Siteimprove displays your site’s progress under the Accessibility Overview page in a graphical format. At a glance, your site’s compliance status is shown in three dimensions:

1. Overall accessibility score
2. Accessibility score details are broken down into three points: a) accessibility errors detected and the corresponding WCAG levels b) accessibility warnings according to all WCAG levels c) pages with multiple levels of A/AA errors
3. Accessibility score progress graph, showing improvement over time. This graph is a quick way of grasping a site’s historical commitment to accessibility and could be a valuable tender in the event of a lawsuit.

Other features on the overview page include export (for reports), page search (to get down to a specific webpage in no time), and so on.

Siteimprove follows an advanced procedure of sorting issues based on roles so that a developer is not burdened with the duty of a content editor and vice versa. Admittedly, the website is a complex whole made of different segments and built by different teams. To ensure that each player is granted a level playing ground in maintaining the brand’s accessibility compliance, Siteimprove’s robust system makes it possible for different teams to assess and contribute to the process. Concerning rectifying compliance issues, Roles/Responsibilities are segmented into three levels (a) Editor (b) Webmaster (c) Developer.

As much as you can select a role, you also can choose issues to fix. To give you a practical illustration, accessibility issues fall under “Issues with Heading”, “Issues with Images,” “Issues with links”, “Issues with Forms”, and other issues. Next, you select conformance. Remember that the scan must have flagged violations according to different levels of the WCAG guidelines. So, to make the task manageable, you could specify which WCAG level (A, AA, or AAA) issues you are prioritizing. Interestingly, all these levels of the WCAG are included in the test, and issues are populated under relevant guidelines.

Siteimprove uses three terms to describe issues detected during a check. They are:

• Errors: are actual violations of a compliance clause. Since these errors are highlighted according to severity level and carry a more significant impact, these are the issues you want to go for first because they have the highest negative impact.
• Warnings: are more of best practices violation.
• Reviews: These are issues that the system finds potentially problematic but could not determine whether or not is an issue and thus would require human intervention.

Just as with axe, Siteimprove provides a detailed description of every violation. A detailed suggestion for fixing accompanies each issue. You are at liberty to decide on the issue — you could choose to fix it right away, ignore it and tag it with a note, or remove the issue temporarily until there is a solution for it, in case you have not found a way around it. For every issue detected, there is a direct link to the specific item of the World Content Accessibility Guidelines that address it.

You can fix issues page by page or refer to them oddly. For every violation flagged in the scan, Siteimprove’s AI-powered dashboard constructs a graphical illustration of its occurrence in terms of its history, the number of occurrences, and the number of pages with the issue. Another exciting feature is that in fixing an issue, the system lets you have a feel of the issue on-page. In other words, you could go to the area with the violation on the live page to see how the error impacts the page or content and whether or not to fix it. This feature comes with an additional advantage. There are times when the issue you are trying to fix may not be visible to you on the page. In a situation like this, you could switch to the HTML view then resolve the issue at the code level. Consequently, you could apply a decision to other related issues without having to implement the fix on each of the locations.

Siteimprove works with different integrations, including browser extensions, CMS plugins, and connectors. Regardless of your technology, Siteimprove always integrates into your workflow.

Customers can reach out to Siteimprove for support via an online chatbot, phone call, or through a contact form. The company also has several physical offices across different locations.

Siteimprove accessibility checker is a paid tool. However, they let you have a taste of their product in a limited scan. The reason for doing this is to usher potential users in. So, how much does the real deal cost? Perhaps it is right to say it costs a negotiation. Siteimprove’s un-disclosed pricing policy is similar to what we have seen with many accessibility solutions. It could be that the brand operates a flexible pricing system that allows charging clients based on the service they enjoy. Or, it could be because Siteimprove’s solutions are custom services and could not be tagged with fixed bills.