Guide for buyers
How to set accessibility requirements for your web agency
Have your domain reviewed before you ask your agency to fix it. With a report of the issues you can describe exactly what needs to be done, and every agency you ask prices the same work. That makes the quotes comparable.
The basis
Two reviews give you a complete basis
An automatic review and a manual expert review find different things. Together they give the agency a clear picture of what needs to be done.
Automatic review
- What you get
- Selma Scanning tests a page against WCAG 2.1 AA in a few seconds. The report shows how many issues the page has and groups them as critical, serious, moderate and minor. It arrives in your email and can be passed on to the agency.
- Good for
- Common technical issues that can be measured, and checking that they really get fixed.
Manual expert review
- What you get
- An accessibility expert reviews up to ten representative page templates line by line against WCAG 2.2 AA and tests them with assistive technology on desktop and mobile. You get an audit report for developers, sorted by severity, WCAG criterion and which users are affected, and an action plan.
- Good for
- What tools cannot see, such as whether a purchase can be completed with a screen reader or whether a text is easy to understand.
Five steps
How to set requirements with the audit report
The report becomes the core of your request to the agency.
- 1
Review first
Run the automatic review on your most important pages and have an expert review the flows that matter most, such as the checkout or a contact form.
- 2
Attach the report to your request
Include the audit report and state that the issues in it are to be fixed. Then the agency knows exactly what the work covers.
- 3
State which standard applies
Say which standard the work should follow, for example WCAG 2.2 at level AA, so that every agency prices against the same requirements.
- 4
Start with the most serious
Ask the agency to fix the critical and serious issues first. The report shows which ones they are.
- 5
Decide how the delivery is checked
Write in your request that you will review again when the agency is done, and that any remaining issues are to be fixed within the assignment.
Comparing prices
How to compare the agencies' quotes
When every agency prices the same report, you compare the price of the same work, not different readings of a brief.
- Send the same report and the same request to every agency.
- Ask for a price per issue or per group of issues, so you can see where the cost lies.
- Compare first what it costs to fix the critical and serious issues. Those are the ones visitors notice most.
- Ask what is included: testing with assistive technology, a new review after delivery and fixing what was not resolved.
- Compare how long the work takes and when you can review the result.
- Ask how the agency avoids new issues as your domain changes.
Would you like help setting requirements?
Book a meeting with us. We help you put the requirements for your agency into words based on your review, so the quotes you get can be compared.
Common questions about setting requirements for an agency
- Why should we review our domain before asking the agency?
- Without a review, each agency prices its own idea of what needs to be done, and the quotes cannot be compared. With an audit report you describe the same work to everyone.
- Is the automatic review enough as a basis?
- It is a good start and shows common issues in a few seconds. But automatic tests do not find every issue and need to be complemented by manual testing. Have an expert review your most important flows with assistive technology.
- How do we know the agency has fixed the issues?
- Review again when the agency is done and compare with the first report. With a Selma account every automatic review is saved, so you can see how things have gone.