The scan report offers a number of different ways to break down and understand the results from accessibility scans. This article will review the following ways of organizing and prioritizing findings from your scans.
On this page:
Sorting and prioritizing by rule
A “rule” in the context of accessibility is similar to what a Quality Assurance tester might refer to as a “test.” Each page included in an accessibility scan is evaluated against a number of rules that collect findings to display in the Report table. Since a rule can be violated more than once, the default view for the scan reports groups all findings within the rule that discovered them.
When viewing findings grouped by rule, the scan report table will show you:
- The Rule Description which describes what the rule is and provides you a link to view the individual findings discovered within that rule.
- The Success Criteria and Conformance Level which shows you the WCAG success criteria that that rule helps to test, and at what conformance level it tests at.
- The Severity which shows you how impactful failing this rule is for people with accessibility needs.
- Open which shows you the number of individual findings discovered for that rule across all pages included in the scan.
- Dismissed which shows you the number of dismissed findings for that particular rule.
This view can be helpful in the prioritization process by giving you three key methods of understanding your findings:
- Prioritizing by Rule: Since the Rule report groups results from all pages by rule, you can begin to understand and address all findings within a certain category. For example, you may choose to start remediation by eliminating all findings related to incorrect heading structure or missing alternative text. Likewise, some rules may be more applicable to one team than to another. For example, you may be able to delegate alt-text findings to a marketing or content stakeholder while you delegate duplicate ID findings to an engineering stakeholder.
- Prioritizing by Severity: Rules are assigned a severity based on their impact to a person with a disability and their likelihood of being cited in a demand letter. To help create the highest amount of accessibility impact on your site, you can sort the Severity column of your report to show all the Critical rules to address those findings first.
- Prioritizing by number of Open Findings: The Rule report also shows you the number of findings discovered within each rule. Prioritizing a rule with a low number of findings and high severity can be an effective strategy for finding quick-wins that increase the number of success criteria that your product supports.
Prioritizing by test results
When viewed by rule, the report table for each scan categorizes findings into one of three test results: Failed, Flagged for review, or Passed. Prioritize and plan your decisions depending on your remediation goals.
The table below describes the different test results.
| Test result | Testing tools | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Passed |
|
This tab shows the Rules that returned no issues, and the number of successfully evaluated elements. |
| Failed |
|
This tab contains findings with a high likelihood of being immediately addressable accessibility findings. Note: Resolving these findings impacts your health score. |
| Manual Review Required |
|
This section contains findings that are potential accessibility issues in accordance with WCAG. Manually review these findings to confirm accuracy. This sub-section of the Failed test results makes it easier to dismiss and avoid false positives. Note: Resolving these findings impacts your health score. |
| Flagged for review |
|
This tab shows accessibility concerns that are not directly associated with WCAG standards. Fixing these findings will improve the accessibility and usability of your website. Note: Resolving these findings doesn’t impact your health score. |
| Recommendations |
|
This section shows accessibility concerns that are not directly associated with to WCAG standards. While not directly related to WCAG, the findings still present a potentially negative impact to visitors of your product. Note: Resolving these findings doesn’t impact your health score. |
Sorting and prioritizing by page
Selecting Page from the View by dropdown in the header of the Report table groups your report findings by individual page included in the scan. Likely this report will be most useful when running a scan on more than one page.
Viewing results by page will show you the following data in the Report table:
- The URL which shows you the URL of the page that was scanned. Clicking on this URL will show you the scan report for that page.
- The Page Score which shows you the accessibility score for that specific page.
- The Open findings count shows you the total number of findings discovered on that specific page (both failed and requires review).
- The Dismissed findings count shows the number of findings that have been dismissed on that page.
- The Failed column shows you the number of Critical, High and Low findings found on the page.
- The Requires Review column shows you the number of individual findings that require a manual check to confirm whether or not it is a valid accessibility issue.
When trying to decide which findings to remediate, it may be helpful to start with the high value or high traffic pages on your site where visitors are most likely to encounter an issue. Additionally, you can filter your high value pages by their individual page score to prioritize the pages with the highest amount of accessibility risk.
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