The compliance rate is the figure shown in your accessibility statement. It is often misunderstood, so here is how it is calculated.
An audit based on a sample
The RGAA does not require every page of a site to be tested. The audit covers a representative sample: home page, contact, legal notice, accessibility statement, sitemap, help pages, plus pages representative of each type of content and each process (sign-up, ordering, payment…).
Criterion by criterion
RGAA 4.1 has 106 criteria. For each one, the auditor determines whether it is:
- compliant: every page in the sample meets it;
- non-compliant: at least one page in the sample fails it;
- not applicable: the criterion does not concern any content in the sample.
The calculation
The compliance rate is the percentage of compliant criteria among the applicable criteria. A single defect on a single page is enough to make a criterion non-compliant for the whole site.
| Rate | Statement to display |
|---|---|
| Below 50% | Non-compliant |
| 50% to 99% | Partially compliant |
| 100% | Fully compliant |
What the rate does not tell you
A rate of 80% can hide a complete blocker: if the payment button cannot be used with a keyboard, a customer cannot place an order, whatever the rate. That is why our audits combine the RGAA checklist with user testing carried out by auditors with disabilities: you know not only how many criteria are met, but where your users get stuck.