A lot of people like automated audits because they are so fast, but they can miss a lot of things. How can be balance a fast audit with a truthful one? We use the Lightning Audit which can be done in as little as one minute. Here’s how the Maryland Tax Connect website stacked up on automated audits vs Lightning Audit.
Initial Automated Testing:
- WAVE: 8 errors, 0 contrast errors, 79 alerts
- Google Lighthouse: 94/100
- Axe: 10 errors
Manual Lightning Audit Score: 3/7
Passing Elements:
- Accessibility statement present
- No autoplay/continuous animations
- Basic focus state functionality
Failed Elements:
- Missing skip to content link
- Main menu skipped during keyboard navigation
- Color contrast issues on search and login fields
- Links and buttons lack clear visual indicators
Despite good automated test scores, the Lightning Audit revealed significant accessibility issues requiring substantial remediation work.
Transcript
Hello, and welcome back to the Easy A11y Guide channel. In this video, we are going to look at the Maryland Tax Connect website and do a lightning audit on it.
Now, when I went to the Maryland Tax Connect website and I ran WAVE on it, I got a wave score of eight errors, zero contrast errors, and 79 alerts. So overall, it looked pretty good.
Then I took a look at Google Lighthouse and it scored a 94 out of 100. Again, it looked quite good.
Then I scored it on the Axe tool, and we got 10 errors, which again, sounds pretty good.
But then when I ran a lightning audit on it, it scored a 3 out of 7, showing it needed a lot of work. What passed was the accessibility statement, free of autoplay, and focus state. This overall showed that it needed a lot of work.
Let’s take a look at the actual site. Here we are on Maryland Tax Connect. At the bottom of the page, we see that there is accessibility. Next, we are going to look for skip to Content Link, and I don’t see anything. Next, free from autoplay and continuous animations. Check. None of those.
Now we’re going to look at our focus state and keyboard navigation. Well, the first it works out pretty well. But we completely skipped our main menu. We didn’t see it at all, so we’re going to fail it on that one. Overall, the focus state is looking pretty decent.
Next up, I’m going to look at the color contrast, and I can see a few failures on the search field and also on the form login fields. Then finally, we’re checking to see if links and buttons are obvious. These are definitely not obvious. They don’t pass.
We just get a score of three out of seven. It passed the accessibility statement, free of autoplay and focus state. This is a website that would need a large amount of remediation work.