WCAG Accessibility
WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) compliance is increasingly a legal requirement, not just a best practice. QuickMonitoring checks each crawled page for common accessibility violations — missing alt text, poor color contrast, missing form labels, keyboard navigation issues. Automated checks won't catch everything, but they catch the most common violations reliably.
What you'll see
Go to Sites → your site → Validation (sidebar) → filter "Accessibility".
Issues are tagged with their WCAG criterion, for example:
- 1.1.1 Non-text Content — missing alt text on images
- 1.4.3 Contrast (Minimum) — text that doesn't meet the contrast ratio requirement
- 2.1.1 Keyboard — elements that aren't keyboard accessible
- 4.1.2 Name, Role, Value — interactive elements missing accessible names
Each violation shows the element, the criterion violated, and what needs to change.
How to use it
- Run a scan
- Go to Sites → your site → Validation (sidebar) → filter "Accessibility"
- Review violations — each shows the element, the criterion, and what to fix
- Prioritize critical violations (keyboard accessibility, alt text, form labels) over warnings (best-practice suggestions)
For client deliverables: export the accessibility report and include it in your QA handoff. It shows exactly what needs fixing before launch.
Pass condition
✅ You've earned this achievement when the Accessibility filter in Validation shows results for at least one crawled page.
Common issues
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Color contrast failures on dark-mode themes — Contrast ratios are calculated against the actual rendered colors. If your site has a dark mode toggle, the crawler captures whatever the default state is. Contrast issues are real — fix them with adjusted color values, not opacity tweaks (opacity reduces contrast further).
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"Missing alt text" on decorative images — Decorative images (dividers, backgrounds, purely visual icons) should have
alt=""to explicitly mark them as presentational. Screen readers will then skip them. An empty alt attribute is correct and intentional — don't add filler text likealt="image". -
Keyboard accessibility failures on custom components — Custom dropdowns, modal dialogs, and carousels built without ARIA roles often fail keyboard navigation checks. These require code changes, not just HTML attribute additions.
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High violation count on a page with a form — Forms are a common source of accessibility failures. Missing
<label>elements, placeholder-only labels, and inputs without associated labels all fail WCAG 1.3.1 and 4.1.2. Fix the form markup — don't rely on placeholders to label fields.