What do Be Inclusive Audit Reports Contain?

Arguably the most important part of a digital accessibility audit is the evaluation report, this is the final artifact that is going to be shared, discussed, and referred back to over weeks or potentially even months.

Because evaluation reports have such a large responsibility, a great deal of time and effort went into the mechanics of reports that Be Inclusive generates. In this article we’ll go into some detail of the overall structure of an evaluation report, how it can be customized, and the many ways it can be shared, referenced, and downloaded.

Rather than filling this article with a bunch of screenshots, we’ll be referencing an actual example audit report so you can see a live example of what is explained here. Let’s dive in!

Structure

Every report is broken up into the following three sections – Summary, Stats, and Observation Details.

Summary

The Summary section is first (live example) and contains all the highest level details that were defined when creating the project including:

• Chosen Conformance Target (WCAG 2.1 Level AA for example)
• Scope of the audit
• Baseline Support
• Testing Tools
• Any additional requirements

The Summary is also where all audit findings you choose to add are placed, these findings can include:

• A Report Title
• Evaluation Commissioner
• Evaluator(s)
• Evaluation Ending Date
• Executive Summary
• Record of Evaluation Specifics

The Executive Summary can be as detailed as you choose, it’s a full WYSIWYG editor with the ability to add lists, headlines, code blocks, and of course bold, italics, strikethrough, etc.

Stats

The Stats section (live example) comes next and is where all the automatically generated overall statistics and charts are placed. This section contains:

Toggle Patterns

A “Toggle Patterns” button that will add patterns to the two charts noted immediately below. Because the chart colors may not contrast enough from each other, we wanted to provide this additional option to make that more clear.

By Impact

A bubble chart labelled “By Impact” that shows the density of observations by effort and priority. Generally, the higher the priority and lower the effort the more impact it will have in a shorter amount of time so focusing on these items first is often a good idea.

Observations Per Page

A donut chart labelled “Observations Per Page” offering an overview of where a majority of observations were found.

Success Criteria

After the two charts is the section of Success Criteria status sums, this is further broken down to outline criteria statuses by WCAG Principle as well as by Target Sample

Overall Percentages

Finally, at the end of the Stats section is Overall Percentages, containing two prominent percentages for completed and passed. These percentages are based on the tracked success criteria in the audit editor across all target samples and compared to the total necessary for the selected target conformance WCAG version and level.

Below the percentages are accordions that show these percentages for the other 8 combinations of WCAG version and level.

Observation Details

This section contains:

• The total number of observations logged and a link to the Observation Visualization table page
• A list of all audited target samples
• An itemized list of all observations that were logged in the audit, separated by target sample starting with global observations first. There’s also a button towards the top of this list to “Expand all observations” so you can see all their details in one place.

Observation details can be as verbose or as light as you choose, there are options to log priority, effort, details, remediation notes, and several other fields but none are required so you have ultimate flexibility to match your workflow.

Customizability

Early on, we recognized that an evaluation report could never be a one size fits all solution. So a good deal of effort was put into making the report itself customizable.

You can choose to upload a Custom Logo in Step 1 of the project setup. If you do, that logo will be used in the printable version of the audit report. See this live example of the printable report of the same audit report we’ve been referencing throughout this article.

Additionally, project admins are able to adjust Section Visibility Settings to turn on/off whole subsections of the audit report. Useful if you would prefer not to show any of these details to your team or client stakeholders.

You can choose to hide:

• the By Impact stats chart
• the Observations Per Page stats chart
• the Success Criteria status sums
• the Overall Percentage Passed stats
• the Observation Visualization table button
• the Observation Details section

Visibility & Export Options

All those details and customizability options wouldn’t mean much without being able to share it in ways that work best for you and your team. That’s why Be Inclusive comes with several options built in for defining report visibility and for exporting your data for use in other systems.

Report Visibility

There are three report visibility options:

• Private (the default) – this means that only logged in admins and editors are able to view the audit report and observations.
• Passcode Protected – when selected you’ll be prompted to enter a passcode, when you share the audit report with others they will need to enter that passcode if they’re not already a logged in editor or admin of the project
• Public – Like the example we’ve been referencing in this article, this means that the report is fully publicly visible without any passcode requirements.

Admins can choose to change visibility settings at any time, they’ll see these three options along with which one is currently active at the top of the audit report page. See an example screenshot below.

Export Options

There are also several export options available, for example to be able to import observations into a task management tool like Jira or Azure DevOps.

Admins and editors of the audit will see these options at the top of the audit report page. Example screenshot below.

Options include:

• Download All Observations as CSV – All observation details in a comma separated list
• Download All Observations as Azure DevOps Issues – Observation details formatted for easy import into Azure DevOps. For further details on how to perform this task, check out How do I import my audit observations into Azure DevOps?
• Download All Observations as Jira Issues – Observation details formatted for easy import into Atlassian Jira. For further details on how to perform this task, check out How do I import my audit observations into Jira?
• Download All Observation Images – All observation images are compressed into a single downloadable bundle.

Wrapping Up

This article covered all the details, customization, and sharing options of the evaluation report page. If you have any further questions or suggestions for this results page please do use the link below to get in touch!

Last updated: Oct 9th 2023