Tesco Privacy Centre Accessibility Audit

Project overview

The was a individual project in my MSc HCID course to perform an accessibility audit of the Tesco Privacy Centre website against the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 AA conformance level. The audit followed 5-step WCAG-EM (Evaluation Method). Both preliminary checks by an automatic tool and a manual audit were performed.

Process

Step 1-3 Define evaluation Scope, Explore target website and Select Representative Sample

The user goal of the website focuses on learning how Tesco collect, use and protect customers’ personal data. Four frequently visited webpages were examined. The user journey started from the homepage through to the policy detail page.

Step 4 - Audit selected sample

The WAVE web accessibility evaluation tool was used to provide a preliminary check on the website. The results provided an overview of some major issues and evidence to further investigate during the manual checking stage.

Each page was then manually inspected through all 12 guidelines in WCAG 2.0 with success criteria from level A and AA. Some issues were investigated through assistive technologies, such as a screen reader and screen magnification. The website was also tested with both mouse and keyboard control.

The issues were rated on three areas: range of users affected, extent of the issues affecting the users to achieve their goals and frequency of issues occurred.

Step 5 - Report the Evaluation Findings

Although most of the website’s elements reach the success criteria requirements, some components fall short. Therefore, the site did not meet WCAG 2.0 Conformance Level A or AA.

The most critical issues found were in the content of the Privacy and Cookies webpage and navigation across all webpages. There were two content issues and six navigation issues in the finding section.

Design recommendations were given for each issue. The majority of issues could be fixed with minor coding changes or by adding meaningful alternative text.