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What is WCAG and why is it important?

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) is a legal requirement to help everyone use the web equally and provide a better overall UX to web visitors. 

This is critical as it supports social inclusion for everyone and takes into account a wide range of disabilities - permanent, temporary and / or situational.

Our objective is clear: we want to give everyone the same opportunity to use our websites.

Silktide

µÚÒ»³Ô¹ÏÍøis using Silktide’s scanner to identify web content accessibility issues on our extranet and public-facing intranets, and advise on content accessibility optimisation. Silktide's scanner is synced with the latest requirements and also shows simulations of how visitors with difficulties, such as dyslexia, see your content.

You will need to log in to Silktide to view the issues that exist on your microsite, and the recommendations for improvement. You will then need to log in to Contensis to make the necessary content amends to improve your accessibility rating.

Silktide will search for broken links, misspellings, offensive language, missing images, page titles etc.

It will show you where the issue is on any given page, what the specific WCAG criteria is for that issue, and recommend how to resolve it to make it compliant – all in non-technical language so it’s easy to understand.

It also tests desktop and mobile accessibility for multi-device capability.

Accessibility training

Please go to  and log in (Silktide will email you your password, which you should then change).

Once logged in for the first time, you will be asked to undertake training videos in the yellow bar:

• Getting started - helps you to understand Silktide's basic concepts and gets you started on using the platform
• Accessibility - covers the basics to get you started with accessibility challenges on your microsites. We recommend you complete this course before working through the actions in the tool
• Content - covers spelling, grammar, broken links and readability
• Policies - if you want to create specific rules for your microsite WCAG. 

The training videos (approximately 30 minutes each) contain interactive questions to help ensure you understand what is required to improve your microsite accessibility ratings. 

Your microsite(s)

Microsite titles have been added to the dashboard and you can search for yours e.g. 'Study' in the 'search all websites' bar. Unfortunately, Silktide is unable to list our sites alphabetically and this request has been added to their roadmap. 

To view the full list, click into 'Websites' in the top menu index. This will help you to find your microsite and compare your WCAG rating against your peers. Weekly scans will be conducted every Sunday so you will be able to see regular overviews of microsite WCAG ratings. 

Once you have completed the training courses, you'll be ready to start improving your microsite accessibility rating - good luck!

We recommend you schedule monthly calendar alerts to review your microsite accessibility - you are responsible for your content and WCAG is a legal requirement which the University is measured against, and committed to.

WCAG support queries

If you have any queries on the WCAG recommendations, Silktide has a 'Chat' option in the bottom right corner of their platform, that you can use to contact them. 

Technical support  

If you require any technical support, have not received your password, or are a new web editor that requires access, please email support@brunelweb.zendesk.com.