OpenText.com Accessibility Audits

In 2015, I performed the intial accessibility audit of www.opentext.com using W3C WAI’s Easy Checks, a first review of web accessibility which focuses on Level A success criteria. The website had a lot of accessibility issues since it was not in the design and development team’s toolbox yet. I started working with content creators and front-end developers to create accessible solutions.

By 2019, OpenText had made good strides towards accessibility of its HTML content. (Video captions and PDFs are another matter.) Looking at the WebAIM Million project, OpenText’s rank has improved greatly from 806,097/1,000,000 in Feburary 2019 to 340,444 a year later. As the website moves to a new CMS, all code and content will go through an accessibility review process.

screenshot of the opentext.com homepage with a large hero carousel.
www.opentext.com homepage

2019 Audit

Read the 2019 OpenText.com accessibility report [pdf]

View the Web Accessibility “lunch and learn” presentation [pdf]

Executive summary

OpenText is required to comply with the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, 2005 (AODA) as a private organization with 50+ employees based in Ontario. These regulations require “new and significantly refreshed public websites” meet WCAG 2.0 guidelines.

Beginning January 1, 2014: new public websites, significantly refreshed websites and any web content posted after January 1, 2012 must meet Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 Level A

Beginning January 1, 2021: all public websites and web content posted after January 1, 2021 must meet WCAG 2.0 Level AA

Accessibility is a way of thinking: It’s habit and process, not a finish line. Good accessibility is intentional, starts with design and is everyone’s responsibility. Much in the way we had to change our thinking and design approaches to achieve responsive layouts, we must now do the same with accessibility.

This report discusses some of the accessiblity issues with the current state of www.opentext.com. While there is improvement from the last review in 2015, the site is still not conforming to basic Level A requirements. This report goes further and assesses the site for WCAG 2.0 Level AA.

Common problems include:

  • Content inaccessible to users with keyboards
  • Content inaccessible to screen readers
  • Poor color contrast between text and background
  • Lack of text alternatives for images, icons, controls and video (captions/transcriptions)
  • Generic link text and empty links
  • Lack of ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) support for custom widgets that depend on JavaScript to function such as video players, faceted navigation and carousels

As Marketing enters another redesign project, the design and development plan must reference and implement these standards to be compliant with Canadian law. The following report outlines the heuristics used to assess each page and identifies specific issues.

Read the 2019 OpenText.com accessibility report [pdf]

Sections

  • Methodology
  • Findings
  • References

2015 Audit

Read the 2015 OpenText.com accessibility report [pdf]

View the 2015 OpenText.com accessibility report presentation [pdf]

Executive summary

OpenText is required to comply with the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, 2005 (AODA)  as a private organization with 50+ employees based in Ontario. These regulations require “new and significantly refreshed public websites” meet WCAG 2.0 Level AA by 1 January 2021.

This audit uncovered many accessibility problems with the OpenText corporate website and no page reviewed satisfied this preliminary first check of accessibility features, a check with a satisfaction threshold below WCAG Level A. Common problems include

  • Color contrast ratio failures site wide
  • Content inaccessible to users with keyboards and screen readers
  • Significant lack of text alternatives for images and multimedia objects
  • Incorrect usage of headings
  • Inaccessible video content
  • Generic link text and empty links
A slide showing that OpenText has until 1 January 2021 under the AODA to have a website that conforms to WCAG 2.0 Level AA.
A training slide about AODA compliance

Read the 2015 OpenText.com accessibility report [pdf]

Sections

  • Methodology
  • Findings
  • References