Conformity tests require complete processes

If you want to check more than just certain sites on your website, or if you need a compliance test based on the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) or EN 301 549, you'll need to create a cross-section of the information and functions on your website. This principle of a ‘representative page selection’ can be found in the German BIK rules, but also in the technical methods for testing the WCAG (WCAG-EM).

The aim of this selection is to choose pages and functions that are representative of all content types and features of your website so that it is not necessary to check every subpage and every instance of a function intensively (and expensively), but a statement on the overall accessibility of a website can still be made.

Such a cross-sectional selection must include all important functions of a website at least once, which means that a complete usage process (e.g. booking an appointment or purchasing a product) must be included in this page selection if we're for example speaking of an online shop. The aim here is also to find out whether and which barriers (in the sense of the WCAG and beyond) may occur when using the specified function.

The challenge now is to take a close look at this entire process as a tester, while at the same time not triggering any bookings, purchases or other contract conclusions.

The easiest way to avoid this is to run the test on a test or development environment (‘staging’), where the process is fully visible but ultimately no contracts (or bookings, purchases, etc.) can be concluded. If this is not possible and only the live system can be provided by the client, data (e.g. name, email address, delivery address) should be provided that clearly identifies the testers as such (and avoid contract conclusions in the test, for example by manually ‘holding’ orders).