Web Accessibility Evaluation

Web accessibility evaluation assesses how well digital content conforms to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines so that it can be used by people with a wide range of disabilities. WCAG 2.0, published as a W3C Recommendation in 2008 by Caldwell, Cooper, Reid, and Vanderheiden, organizes requirements under four principles—content must be Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and Robust (POUR)—each broken into testable success criteria graded at conformance levels A, AA, and AAA. A rigorous evaluation combines three complementary methods: automated tools that scan for machine-detectable issues, manual expert inspection against the success criteria, and testing with assistive technologies such as screen readers and keyboard-only navigation. The evaluation determines whether the content satisfies all success criteria up to a target level and yields a conformance claim. Because no single method catches every barrier, the strength of the assessment lies in layering all three.