Reviewing a community centre open day before launch

Scenario

Riverside Community Centre is preparing to launch its open-day website. You have been asked to review whether visitors can explore activities, filter the schedule, understand the venue map and travel information, and reach the booking action across a range of input, display, and preference conditions.

Your role: Accessibility tester reviewing an open-day website before launch

What you will practise

• Define a focused, reproducible review across several environments and user preferences.
• Assess keyboard access, focus visibility, operation, sequence, and content obstruction.
• Test whether visual states and meaningful graphics remain available in forced colors.
• Assess movement with reduced-motion preferences and identify user control requirements.
• Evaluate touch-target spacing and useful content in portrait and landscape orientations.
• Compare travel video audio, captions, visual information, and transcript for equivalent meaning.
• Consolidate overlapping evidence and make a proportionate launch recommendation.

Methods used

• Testing keyboard accessibility

  Check whether every interactive element can be reached, identified, and operated with a keyboard in a logical sequence.

• Testing forced colors and high contrast

  Check whether information, controls, states, and focus remain perceivable when a browser applies forced colors.

• Testing motion, animation, and flashing

  Check whether moving and animated content can be controlled and whether a page respects reduced-motion preferences safely.

• Testing mobile touch and orientation

  Check target size and spacing, orientation support, gesture alternatives, and pointer cancellation on touch interfaces.

• Testing media accessibility

  Check prerecorded captions, transcripts, visual description, autoplay, and essential player operation across media alternatives.

• Testing zoom and reflow

  Check whether content and functionality remain available when text is enlarged and the page reflows into a narrow CSS viewport.

Optional preparation

• Learning path

  Your first accessibility review

  Build a practical beginner review through paired methods and Exercises for automated, keyboard, visual, user-preference, motion, mobile-touch, media, zoom, forms, and time-limit testing.

  Level: beginner

  Estimated time: 530 minutes

Review stages

1. Define the review scope and environments

   Record the workspace route, browsers, operating systems, input methods, viewport sizes, zoom conditions, themes, forced-colors and motion settings, media settings, and initial state. Identify checks that require a physical device or another platform.

2. Complete core tasks with a keyboard and at high zoom

   Move through navigation, activities, schedule filters, venue information, travel information, and booking using only a keyboard. Repeat representative tasks at 200% and 400% zoom or equivalent narrow CSS widths, checking focus, operation, sequence, reflow, and content that may be obscured.

   Use:

   • Testing keyboard accessibility
   • Testing zoom and reflow

3. Review visual preferences and movement

   Compare selected schedule states and the venue map in ordinary colors and forced colors. Observe featured activities with and without reduced motion, checking whether movement starts automatically and whether users can pause, stop, hide, or reduce it.

   Use:

   • Testing forced colors and high contrast
   • Testing motion, animation, and flashing

4. Test touch targets and orientation

   Inspect and measure representative controls, including the map controls and primary actions. Test portrait and landscape at phone-like dimensions and compare desktop landscape. Record what emulation can demonstrate and what still needs physical-device testing.

   Use:

   • Testing mobile touch and orientation

5. Compare the travel video's alternatives

   Play, pause, seek, and adjust the travel video. Compare spoken information, captions, meaningful visuals, and the transcript for timing, accuracy, completeness, and equivalent access to important details.

   Use:

   • Testing media accessibility

6. Consolidate evidence and recommend

   Merge overlapping observations into reproducible findings, retain useful passing checks and limitations, prioritize user impact, propose remediation and follow-up testing, and recommend whether the website is ready to launch.

   Use:

   • Testing keyboard accessibility
   • Testing forced colors and high contrast
   • Testing motion, animation, and flashing
   • Testing mobile touch and orientation
   • Testing media accessibility
   • Testing zoom and reflow

Deliverables

• Test environment, scope, and stated limitations.
• Reproducible findings with evidence and user impact.
• Passing checks and behavior that requires follow-up testing.
• Consolidated evidence where several methods reveal one underlying problem.
• Remediation direction, ownership questions, and follow-up checks.
• Concise launch recommendation identifying blockers and residual risk.