WCAG

Making your questionnaire surveys available to everyone increases your response rate, and leaves all respondents with a nice user experience. This also includes people with visual impairment, color blindness or physical disabilities.

• WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) is an international standard for web accessibility which, since 2008, has aimed to give everyone, regardless of impairment or disability, the same opportunities to access the internet.
• The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) developed the Web Directive, which is based on four main principles, namely that websites and digital services must be; 1; perceivable, 2; operable, 3; understandable, and 4; robust.
• The WCAG standard has been continuously updated and revised, and the current WCAG 2.1 from 2018 embraces even more specific disability groups than before – and thus also stipulates more requirements.
• In 2018, the EU made it mandatory for all new public websites and applications to comply with the updated WCAG 2.1. On September 23, 2020, this law was then expanded to include older websites that were previously exempt.

• A questionnaire, with or without legal requirements, should comply with the WCAG 2.1 standard. As a public organization, you should do everything you can to ensure that everyone has equal access to your offerings. This is, first and foremost, to protect citizens' rights. But it also means that you get more answers, more representative data, more insight, and a better basis for decision-making.
• The WCAG standard is divided into three levels: A, AA and AAA, and EU law requires public websites to comply with the AA level. This stipulates no less than 50 guidelines that you must comply with.
• SurveyXact allows you to easily make your surveys available while complying with WCAG 2.1 AA. We have ensured that you can create questionnaire surveys in a way that as many people as possible can answer, with or without disability.
• But you can easily do the opposite as well. It's all very much about your choices when creating your questionnaire. The most important thing is to put yourself in the respondents' shoes while creating your questionnaire.

The WCAG standards are built upon four focus areas that make websites accessible to, and usable by, all users, regardless of prerequisites.

It must be easy for all users to perceive the information presented to them in a questionnaire. This means ensuring that everyone understands the questions and that everyone, including those with impaired vision, can navigate their way through your survey. This means, among other things, that all "non-text” elements, such as images, graphic elements and any audio and video content, must have a descriptive text, so that it is comprehensible to a screen reader or other assistive technology. 

Keep in mind that a very pedagogical illustration of an arrow to click on is not very useful if the respondent cannot see it.

All content must therefore be completely clear to respondents with impaired vision and those with cognitive issues or learning difficulties, by using descriptive text. Thus, every element of your questionnaire can be perceived using technical aids such as screen readers. 

It must be possible to answer all questionnaires by using just a mouse or keyboard. It is therefore important that it is always clear where on the page a person is, in order to be able to orientate oneself. 

All content in your questionnaire must be so easy to understand that everyone, with or without disability, can understand and follow the instructions without additional guidance. You can ensure this by, among other things, being consistent in the names and descriptions of functions and navigation tools. Being pedagogical is also important in this context. How should the respondents answer the questions? Should they press a particular key? Where should they click to progress when they have answered? Explain everything with simple and easy-to-understand text.

In WCAG terms, robustness means "technically compatible". In short, this means that the entire questionnaire (navigation, function, content, etc.) must support common browsers and assistive technology. It may therefore be a good idea to avoid adding special features with scripts and code.

Yes and no. Private companies are not obliged to comply with WCAG 2.1 AA. No fines are imposed by the EU or the W3C because of how inaccessible a company's website or questionnaire is.

But it is good practice and due diligence to put oneself in the respondent's shoes. Because no matter why you are collecting data, a high response rate is preferable. Private companies should also have a sense of social responsibility – and it is also relatively simple. Finally, it is not unlikely that the WCAG requirements will be imposed on the private sector at some point in the future. So why not be ahead of the competition?