Editoria11y Website Accessibility Checker

Editoria11y (“editorially”) is an accessibility checker built into your website. While you’re logged in, it checks each page you open, and the page you’re editing, for common problems: missing or unhelpful image descriptions, skipped heading levels, unclear link text, linked PDFs and more. Each alert explains the problem and how to fix it. Visitors never see the alerts.

If you don’t see the Editoria11y buttons at the bottom right of the page when you’re logged in, it isn’t turned on for your account. Contact VC3 support to turn it on.

Alerts on a Page

Open any page on your site while logged in. Alerts appear next to the content that needs a look, and the buttons at the bottom right show how many alerts the page has.

• A red ! is an error: something to fix, such as alt text that is just the image’s file name.
• A yellow ? is a manual check: something that may be a problem. Read it and decide, for example whether a “click here” link makes sense on its own.

Select an alert to read what’s wrong and how to fix it. Use the arrows at the bottom of the alert to go to the previous or next one, or select the number at the bottom right to go to the first alert.

Manual Checks: Mark as OK or Ignored

If you’ve checked a yellow alert and the content is fine, you can dismiss it:

• Mark as OK hides the alert for everyone who edits the site.
• Mark as ignored hides it just for you.

Errors (red) can’t be dismissed; fix them instead. On some sites these buttons aren’t available.

To bring back a hidden alert, select the eye button that appears at the bottom right (Show hidden alert), select the alert, then Restore this hidden alert.

Check Headings and Alt Text

Select the list button at the bottom right, then Headings or Alt Text. Editoria11y labels each heading on the page with its level (H2, H3 and so on) and shows each image’s alt text over the image. Check that the headings form an outline without skipping a level, and that each alt text describes what the image means on the page. Labels on your site’s header and footer can be ignored.

Alerts While You Edit

Editoria11y also checks the text editor while you edit a page. The alerts update as you type, so you can fix a problem and watch its alert disappear, for example by changing a Heading 4 to a Heading 3.

Hide or Show the Alerts

Select the round flag button at the bottom right to hide all alerts while you look at the page. Select it again to show them.

Tips

• Fix the red alerts first. Then go through the yellow ones.
• For help with what an alert asks for, see Website Accessibility.