Website Owners: Mindbreeze GmbH
Website Domain: search.mindbreeze.com/apps/wai
Certificate Status: Silver
Certification Date: 2022-11-16
WACA certification
With this certificate, the WACA initiative strives for a very high level and outstanding quality of accessibility, which is why the most basic WCAG criteria must be met for successful certification. The auditors test according to a predefined scheme and their own testing methodology strictly according to these criteria. The WACA certificate is awarded at 3 different levels. For each WCAG success criterion, a separate grading for gold, silver and bronze has been defined. This means that websites that do not meet the highest WCAG requirements or are best practice, but have basic accessibility and do not exclude anyone from using the website, can also be awarded. For the Silver or Bronze grades, accessibility efforts must be clearly and unambiguously recognizable, see definition of WACA grades.
WACA certifies websites that can be narrowed down precisely, usually defined by a URL, and draws a representative sample (test sample) from this. However, the following content or functions of a website are generally excluded from the audit:
- PDF
- EPUB
- Live transmitted time-based media
- Content that is only available to a closed group of people and not to the general public (extranets and intranets).
- external content from third-party providers that was neither financed nor developed by the website operator and is therefore not subject to its control (such as Google Maps, YouTube, Facebook, external iframes and widgets, etc.), defined as follows:
- Third-party content that cannot be interacted with (e.g. Facebook tracking pixels) is excluded from the check.
- Third-party content that does not provide basic, central functionality of the page is excluded from the check.
- Third-party content that provides additional information and is essential for users requires an alternative.
- If a website consists largely of third-party content, certification is rejected and the order is not accepted. Website is not auditable in this case.
- Online maps and map services, but these must have an accessible alternative.
- Google Captcha (ReCaptcha V2): Only valid for WACA quality levels Silver and Bronze.
General Comment of the Certification Authority:
This web tool should be accessible to most users, even though accessibility is not perfect. One complaint is that the usability (and accessibility to some extent) is somewhat limited on smaller mobile devices, because some hit targets can get very small without zooming (which means scrolling in two directions). Besides that, the visual keyboard focus and non-text contrast ratios can be an issue in some edge cases.
As a representative sample for the Mindbreeze InSpire cloud search web application, a use case in German and English was selected for the certification audit, which is representative of the entire application. The product website www.mindbreeze.com/insite was not in the scope of the audit.
The following contents or functions of a website are generally excluded from the WACA Certificate audit:
- Websites containing non-German and/or English language content
- Apps for mobile applications
- PDFs
- Live broadcast time-based media
- Content that is only available to a closed group of people and not to the general public (extranets, intranets)
- External third-party content that was neither financed nor developed by the website operator and is therefore not subject to their control (such as Google Maps, YouTube, Facebook, other Iframes and widgets, ...) as follows:
- Third-party content that you cannot interact with (such as Facebook tracking pixels) is excluded from the certification process.
- Third-party content that does not provide a basic core functionality is excluded from the certification process.
- Third-party content that provides additional information and is essential to users needs to provide an alternative.
- If a website consists largely of third-party content, certification will be rejected and the application will not be accepted. The website is not auditable.
- Online maps and map services, though these must provide an accessible alternative
- Google Captcha (ReCaptcha V2): valid only for the Silver and Bronze level
Evaluated test sample
WACA deviations and WACA gradations
Mindbreeze T1: Homepage english
Criterion 1.4.10 - Reflow: Silver
- In mobile view: Site does not fulfill the reflow criterion as user need to scroll in two directions (see screenshot).
Rating silver: should not affect the overall usability or accessibility too much.
The hit targets on smartphones are (depending on screen size and resolution) quite small and this causes that some actions are hard to perform: e.g. “save”, “cancel”, “delete” for the search tabs (without having to zoom in which contradicts the “reflow” criterion).
Rating silver: affects the usability and accessibility. But can be mitigated with smartphone zoom
Criterion 1.4.11 - Non-text Contrast: Silver
- - In search results: Found parts of the search string get highlighted. Should have contrast ratio of > 3:1
Rating silver: less important
Date picker: Keyboard focus contrast for inactive elements of datepicker is too low.
Rating silver: should not affect the overall usability or accessibility too much.
Criterion 2.4.7 - Focus Visible: Silver
- Visual keyboard focus can disappear behind the nav bar when going backwards and the site is scrolling upwards.
Rating silver: should not affect the overall usability or accessibility too much.
Mindbreeze T2: Homepage german
Mindbreeze T3: Search results
Criterion 1.3.1 - Info and Relationships: Silver
- Search results are visually and logically a list and should be annotated as such
Rating silver: should not affect the overall usability or accessibility too much.
Mindbreeze T4: Add search tab
Mindbreeze T5: Save search
Mindbreeze T6: Help
Mindbreeze T7: Settings
Mindbreeze T8: Error handling