Certification Report for Whistleblower Software

Website Owners: Whistleblower Software ApS
Website Domain: whistleblowersoftware.com/secure/98f5ec13-1d6f-4688-a602-484fa4dfbd60
Certificate Status: Silver
Certification Date: 2023-09-27

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:

For this WACA certification, 5 templates of this web application were checked for web accessibility according to WCAG 2.1 - A and WCAG 2.1 - AA (https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/quickref/). A strong orientation towards accessibility can be seen in the tested templates. Many of the problem areas that arose in the first audit have been rectified.
As a representative sample for the entire application "Whistleblower Software", a complete use case of a test version in English language based on a test platform with the URL https://whistleblowersoftware.com/secure/98f5ec13-1d6f-4688-a602-484fa4dfbd60 was selected for the certification audit. The product website https://whistleblowersoftware.com/en was not in the scope of this audit.

The following contents or functions of a website and web apps 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

    WBS T1: Homepage english

    Criterion 1.3.1 - Info and Relationships: Silver

    Headings: OK

    Hierarchy not quite optimal (gaps) but tolerable for silver
    <h1>WCAG AA 2.1 audit Whistleblower Channel
    <h2>(Missing heading)
    <h3>Anonymous reporting of serious matters
    <h3>HR related matters
    <h3>Following up on your reports can be relevant for numerous reasons:

    HTML structure: OK
    landmarks like main, nav, footer present

    Lists: OK

    Labels: OK

    WBS T2: New report

    Criterion 2.1.1 - Keyboard: Silver

    The pseudoselect fields have now been optimized
    Still not fully optimal (e.g. focus setting) but mainly tolerable for silver

    Criterion 2.4.3 - Focus Order: Silver

    focus setting has been optimized
    Not yet fully optimal but mainly tolerable for silver

    Criterion 4.1.3 - Status Messages: Silver

    dynamic messages have been optimized
    Not yet fully optimal but mainly tolerable for silver

    WBS T3: Submit report

    Criterion 4.1.3 - Status Messages: Silver

    pop-up message see T2

    WBS T4: Follow up on existing report

    Criterion 4.1.3 - Status Messages: Silver

    pop-up message see T2
    after message sent there is now an alert information

    WBS T5: Content-page