This plugin scans all your published content and lists the pages that have common accessibility problems. It looks for four things:
- tables without correct header markup
- inline, hard-coded colour styles
- poor link text, such as “click here”
- images with empty alt text
The report links to each page so that you can view it and edit it. Use it to find and fix existing problems, and to show progress if your organisation has to report on accessibility.
The plugin has different names in different places. On the Plugins screen it is (Govintra) Accessibility content review. In the Tools menu it is Accessibility Review.
Open the accessibility review
Go to Tools, then Accessibility Review. Only administrators can see it.
The review scans the main content and the other rich-text boxes, such as sidebar content, of everything that is published. It scans each time you open the screen, so it is always up to date. On a large intranet this takes a few seconds. The heading shows the number of pages of interest in brackets.
What the accessibility review checks
Under the heading, the screen links each check to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) rule it relates to. The links open the W3C guidance in a new tab.
Table: tables missing header rows
The review flags a page if it contains a table with no header cells. Screen readers use header cells to tell people which column or row a value belongs to. Without them, a table is read out as a stream of unconnected values. This relates to WCAG 1.3.1, Info and relationships.
To fix it, give the table a header row, or rebuild it in TablePress, which adds headers for you. Tables made with TablePress are not flagged. See Create a new accessible table and Create an accessible table from an existing HTML page. If the table is only there to lay out a page in columns, remove it.
Colour: inline colour styles
The review flags a page if its content has a colour set directly on a piece of text or a background, including the old font colour tags. This usually arrives when text is pasted from Word or an email. Hard-coded colours can fail contrast rules, do not change in dark mode and cannot be fixed across the intranet in one go. This relates to WCAG 1.4.3, Contrast (minimum).
To fix it, edit the page, select the affected text and select Clear formatting. See Use the editor toolbar.
Click: poor link text
The review flags a page if it has a link whose whole text is one of these: “click here”, “here”, “click”, “read more”, “more”, “more info”, “more information”, “this link”, “link” or “download”. Capital letters, a full stop at the end and bold text make no difference, so “Click here.” is caught. A link such as “Download the expenses form” is fine, because it says what it is. Screen reader users often move through a page from link to link, so each link needs to make sense on its own. This relates to WCAG 2.4.4, Link purpose (in context).
To fix it, link the words that describe where the link goes, such as “Book annual leave”. See Add links to pages, documents and email addresses.
Alt tag: images with empty alt text
The review flags a page if it has an image with empty alt text, or with no alt text setting at all. Alt text is what a screen reader reads out in place of an image. This relates to WCAG 1.1.1, Non-text content.
An empty alt text is not always wrong. It is the correct choice for an image that is only decoration, because it tells screen readers to skip the image. The review cannot tell a decorative image from one where the alt text was forgotten, so look at each flagged page and decide. If the image carries information, add alt text that describes it. If it is decoration, leave it as it is. See Add an image to a page.
Read the accessibility review table
There is one row for each page with at least one problem.
- Edit: opens the page in the editor, in a new tab.
- Page: the title of the page. Select it to view the page, in a new tab.
- Type: the internal name of the kind of content, such as page, task, news or team_news.
- Published and Modified: when the page was published and last changed.
- Table, Colour, Click and Alt tag: 1 if the page has that problem, 0 if not.
- Total: how many of the four checks the page fails, from 1 to 4.
The numbers show whether a problem was found, not how many times. A page with thirty “click here” links scores 1 for Click, the same as a page with one.
Select a column heading to sort by that column, and select it again to reverse the order. The arrow in the heading shows which column is sorted and which way. The headings work from the keyboard. They stay in view as you scroll down a long report.
Download the accessibility review
Select Download report as CSV. The file is called accessibility-report, followed by the date and time. It has the same rows as the screen, with two extra columns: the page’s ID and its URL.
The columns in the file are separated by tabs. Numbers on a Mac and Google Sheets usually open the file in columns straight away. If Excel shows everything in one column, select that column, choose Data, then Text to Columns, choose Delimited, tick Tab and select Finish.
Download the report before you start fixing things, and again afterwards, to show how many pages you have dealt with.
Plan the work
- Start with the pages staff use most. Sort by Total to find the worst pages, but fix a busy page with one problem before a forgotten page with three.
- Look at the Type column. If most of the rows are old news or team news, ask whether that content should be removed or left to expire instead of being fixed.
- Fix the cause as well as the pages. Hard-coded colours and “click here” links come from habits. Show editors how to paste as plain text and how to write link text.
- Share the work. Download the report, add a column for an owner, and send each team its own rows.
Stop new problems with the Accessibility copilot
The review finds problems that already exist. The theme can also warn editors as they work. Go to Options, then General, open the Text and features tab and switch on Accessibility copilot. Each time someone saves a page, the theme checks it for the same kinds of problem, using the same list of vague link phrases, and shows a warning on the edit screen. Using both together means the list of pages of interest gets shorter and stays short.
What the accessibility review does not check
A clear report does not mean that your intranet is accessible. The review is a quick scan for four common problems.
- It reads the main content and the other rich-text boxes of each page, such as sidebar content. It does not read plain text boxes, widgets, menus or the header and footer.
- It reads published content only, not drafts.
- The Click check looks for a list of well-known vague phrases. It cannot judge whether other link text is clear, such as several links on one page that all say “Annual report”.
- It does not check colour contrast, including the contrast of your intranet’s own brand and category colours.
- It does not check headings, the reading order of a page, captions on videos, or the documents you link to, such as PDFs.
Use it alongside testing with a keyboard and a screen reader, and a full accessibility audit when you need one.