Monitoring and feedback #

This page is for accessibility coordinators and project managers who keep a site accessible after launch, and the editors and administrators who help them. Laws for public bodies usually ask for a way for people to report barriers and request information in another form, and for regular checks. Exponential gives you the building blocks; the routine is yours.

Note This page describes features and common practice; it is not legal advice. Check the law that applies to your organization with your legal counsel.

Contents #

1. A feedback channel
2. Answering reports
3. A monthly content spot check
4. Watching for regressions
5. Records to keep
6. Related pages

A feedback channel #

• Offer at least two ways: an e-mail address and a form (and a phone number where you have one).
• Build the form with the information collector: the shipped Feedback form class (feedback_form) or a class of your own, so each report is stored as a collection and can be mailed to a team (Forms with the information collector).
• Fields: what the person tried to do, the page address (prefilled where possible), what happened, how to reply. Make every field but the description optional.
• Link the channel from the accessibility statement and the footer.
• The form must itself be accessible (see "Accessible forms").

Answering reports #

1. Acknowledge each report within a fixed time and give a reference.
2. Provide the information in an accessible form at once if it is content (send the text of a PDF, describe an image).
3. Classify the cause: content (assign to the editor), template (to the developer), extension, third party.
4. Fix, reply, and add the case to your findings table.
5. Read reports in Setup > Collected information; access needs infocollector/read, so give it to the people who handle reports (Collected information).

A monthly content spot check #

• Take ten pages published or changed in the month (the dashboard and the search can list recent content).
• For each: alternative text, headings, link texts, tables, linked documents, language.
• Where the Exponential Intelligence extension is active, the Missing alt text report (/expai/alttext) lists images without alternative text below a node (Exponential Intelligence).
• Feed problems back to the editors with an example of the better version.

Watching for regressions #

• After every release that changes templates: an automated check and a keyboard pass on the changed templates (see "Testing with axe and the keyboard").
• After an upgrade: read the release's changelog for accessibility entries (the project records fixes there, for example in the 6.0.15 changelog).
• Re-check embedded third-party content (maps, video, forms of other services) when the provider changes it.

Records to keep #

Related pages #

• Collected information
• Form submissions
• Testing your site's accessibility
• Free documentation: this page is free to copy, translate and improve under the GNU FDL 1.3.