Digiwin, with its Accessiweb-certified accessibility experts, has been helping its customers achieve RGAA compliance for many years. In this article, find out more about the organization and process of an RGAA accessibility audit of a site or application.

You can also read about the implementation of the multi-year accessibility plan in a dedicated article.

What is the RGAA?

The referentiel général d’amélioration de l’accessibilité (RGAA, also pronounced RG2A) is a normative document :

  • Published by DINSIC (the French government’s interministerial directorate for digital information and communication systems) and,
  • Inspired by the WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, proposed by the W3C).

Version 4 of the RGAA was published in September 2019. It is a method for applying WCAG 2.1 for French administrations and businesses. Through a series of documents, the RGAA makes it possible to assess the accessibility of a website or any web client application. Its aim is to enable technicians to offer platforms that can be used optimally by all categories of public, whether disabled or those less familiar with digital tools.

Contributions of RGAA 4

Compared with RGAA 3, version 4 introduces a number of changes:

  • Disappearance of references to levels A, AA and AAA. From now on, compliance will be measured against level AA of the WCAG (level A included), corresponding to the European requirement for digital accessibility.
  • The RGAA 4 is no longer intended solely as a reference for public administrations, but also extends to the private sector.
  • The previous RGAA 3 was based on WCAG 2.0 recommendations, while RGAA 4 is based on WCAG 2.1.
  • The RGAA 4 takes greater account of theevolution of current technologies, such as asynchronous loading and mobile display.
  • Appearance of a reference score calculation toestimate the overall compliance of the audited sample.

RGAA compliance procedure

  • Initial audit

    1

    • Identification of a sample of about ten pages/gabbits
    • Diagnosis and reporting of non-conformities
    • Summary with compliance score
  • Support for corrections

    2

    • Office files
    • Ticketing tool
  • Control audit

    3

    • Diagnosis of identified anomalies
    • Validation or not
  • Declaration of conformity

    4

    • For French local authorities and administrations
    • For companies with sales in excess of 250 million euros

1. Initial audit – recommendations

In application of the February 2005 law on equal opportunities, compliance with accessibility standards requires site designers to take WCAG recommendations into account right from the design phase.

When to carry out the audit?

Support right from the start

The best way to develop an accessible site is to follow the project from conception to production. And even afterwards. This means..:

  • Provide expert advice right from the specifications stage;
  • Supporting technical and ergonomic choices ;
  • Make design teams aware of graphic issues and audit models;
  • Monitor developments on a day-to-day basis by auditing components or templates on an ongoing basis and setting up a ticketing service;
  • Training contribution teams ;
  • Audit contributed pages after they have gone live;
  • Produce and publish the declaration of conformity.

Support for a project in progress or a posteriori

Some projects don’t take accessibility constraints into account upstream, and require an intervention after the fact. In such cases, an audit can be carried out on templates already developed.

How an accessibility audit works

  • Sampling of around ten pages/templates. Some pages are determined automatically by the RGAA: home page, contact page, page dedicated to accessibility, search etc. ;
  • RGAA audit of the sample and transfer of each error to a grid for use by development teams;
  • Summary document with presentation to project decision-makers. This summary document includes a score calculation established following the audit. This score must not fall below 50% compliance, and must aim for 100%. A site can be considered accessible with a score of over 80%. Of course, this calculation remains a subjective indication, without taking into account the difficulties encountered by certain audiences. If certain criteria cannot be met, the possibility of derogations should be considered.

Depending on the complexity of the site’s pages/templates, the duration of an audit will vary. The more the site uses new technologies, asynchronously with animations, scripts and complex forms, the longer the audit will take. A complete audit should take 5 to 10 days.

2. Support for corrections

Following the audit, the expert provides the development teams with a document of recommendations. This document may take the form of a written document and/or be made up of follow-up tickets in a dedicated application. Follow-up tickets are the most effective way of ensuring that errors are corrected. This is the method Digiwin recommends. It allows you to dispense with part of the control audit.

3. Control audit

For an audit without ticket tracking, a complete verification of the compliance work must be carried out. This audit, which lasts several days , goes over all the anomalies found and validates them or not, before resulting in a new score calculation.

For an audit followed by ticketing, the control audit (of lesser scope) can be staggered over time, to ensure compliance in production.

4. Declaration of conformity

French local authorities and administrations, as well as any company with annual sales in excess of 250 million euros, are required to make a declaration of compliance available to the public. This declaration, a standardized document, must be accessible online and present the work carried out to meet accessibility standards. It must include the score and any derogations, as well as the contact details of a reference person and of the “défenseur des droits”, in the event of a dispute.

Publication of the declaration of conformity generally closes the hearing cycle for an accessible project. However, it can be provided on a provisional basis, before the final work is completed, and then updated.

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