Guide to Using Editoria11ly Accessibility Checker

Below is a complete list of alerts and errors that Editoria11y finds and shares with Content Editors. 

Use this guide to determine whether you should ignore, fix or mark OK for all users.
 

Text Alternatives 

• Images with no alt text:

  • Do not ignore
     
  • Add Alt Text
     

• Images with a filename as alt text:

  • Do not ignore
     
  • Add meaningful Alt Text
     

• Images with very long alt text:

  • Do not ignore
     
  • Review the alt text to see if it is appropriate
     
  • Some images are worthy of very descriptive text
     
  • See: Alt text helps the visually impaired experience the James Webb Telescope images (NPR)
     

• Alt text that contains redundant text like “image of” or “photo of”:

  • Do not ignore
     
  • Remove the redundant text
     

• Images in links with alt text that appears to be describing the image instead of the link destination:

  • Do not ignore
     
  • Assign Alt Text to image that will meaningfully describe where the link may take the user and what they can do there

Embedded Visualizations That Usually Require a Text Alternative 

• Links with no text:

  • Do not ignore
     
  • Add meaningful Link Text
     

• Links titled with a filename:

  • Do not ignore
     
  • Add meaningful Link Text
     

• Links only titled with generic text (“Click here,” “Learn more,” “Download,” etc.): 

  • Do not ignore
     
  • In general avoid using terms like “click here”, “learn more”, and “download"
     
  • Instead use more meaningful Link Text that describes what the link is for
     

• Links that open in a new window without warning:

  • Ignore
     
  • We are investigating, a template-based solution from within Drupal that will address this

Document Outline and Structure 

• Skipped heading levels: 

  • Do not ignore
     
  • Maintain sequential heading hierarchy
     

• Empty headings: 

  • Do not ignore
     
  • All headings should have some text content
     
  • Empty headings cannot be used to create extra vertical space in your page; they must be deleted
     

• Very long headings: 

  • Ignore, but also use your judgement to decide that a very long heading is necessary
     

• Suspiciously short blockquotes that may actually be headings:

  • Do not ignore
     
  • Blockquotes should be used for quoting text, while headings should be used to define sections and sub-sections of content 
     

• All-bold paragraphs with no punctuation that may actually be headings:

  • Do not ignore
     
  • If the all-bold text is intended to be a heading, ensure that a heading style is used in the text editor
     
  • Avoid the use of all bold paragraph with no punctuation
     

• Suspicious formatting that should probably be converted to a list (asterisks and incrementing numbers/letters prefixes):

  • Do not ignore
     
  • Use the list function in the text editor when organizing content as bullet points
     

• Tables without headers and tables with document headers ("Header 3") instead of table headers (<th>):

  • Ignore
     
  • Drupal template should prevent this from happening; let us know if you see this error

General Quality Assurance 

• Large quantities of caps lock text:

  • Do not ignore
     
  • Avoid using large all caps text content
     

• Links to PDFs and other documents reminding the user to test the download for accessibility or provide an alternate, accessible format:

  • Ignore only if you have checked the document for accessibility or if the document is redundant to the content on the page (the document contains the exact content that is on the page)
     
  • Example: a PDF flyer version of an event page
     

• Video embeds, reminding the user to add closed captions:

  • Do not ignore
     
  • Make sure to videos have accurate captions.
     

• Audio embeds, reminding the user to provide a transcript:

  • Do not ignore
     
  • Make sure audio files have accurate transcripts.
     

• Social media embeds, reminding the user to provide alt elements:

  • Do not ignore
     
  • Make sure all new posts made by your social media account holders use alt text