Nimisha Malreddy

About
Resume 
Art & Design 


Accessibility Audit for The Met.




Role
Product Designer


Contributions
Accessibility Evaluation
Design Duration
10 weeks

Type
Internship




The Met serves a broad audience, so it’s essential that as a public institution, its digital presence reflects its commitment to inclusion and access.






GoalTo evaluate The Met’s website against Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 AA standards*, identifying ways to improve accessibility for everyone.

* The WCAG 2.2 are a set of technical standards that can improve the accessibility of web content for individuals with a wide range of disabilities- like auditory, cognitive, physical, neurological, speech and visual.





WCAG Standards







The METhod Behind the Madness
PART 1: COMPONENT LEVEL AUDIT

I dove deep into the design system ‘Marble’ and identify if each component (Icons, typography, color, buttons, etc) are violating WCAG 2.2 standards.

The ‘Accessibility Template’ was born out of the need to provide some standardisation and guidance to future designers who will look at the design system and also be able to understand which user group would benefit from following the guidelines, some common dos/don’ts, when this was last updated and a call out of improvements or suggestions.


PART 2: PAGE LEVEL AUDIT

Please give it up for my favourite tool- Google sheets

My favourite but most meticulous part of the audit was, actually conducting the audit. Each page was asessed against certain WCAG guidelines and given a ‘PASS’, ‘PASS-Exception’ and ‘FAIL’ tag.

The ‘PASS- Exception’ was often not used but only given in a scenario where there was a way to work around that violation. 



The scope was limited to five high-traffic pages and key WCAG criteria, prioritizing impact over completeness.

Home Page
Collection Search Page
Object Page
TOAH Essays Page
Exhibitions Detail Page





A deeper look at the violations
View the Stakeholder Slidedeck to take a look at all the violations that I’ve identified across the website. For now, here’s a few:

Home Page


Enough Time: Pause, stop, hide
There should be an option to pause or stop the video.Distinguishable: Contrast Minimum
The text & button must pass contrast levels against all frames in the video. Input Modalities: Label in Name
Banner should be descriptive, not it's file name.



Collections Search Page


Keyboard Accessible: Keyboard (AAA)
All functionality of the content must be operable through a keyboard interface.Navigable: Focus Visible (AA)
There must be visible indication of where the focus is during keyboard navigation. 





Without user testing, it was difficult to validate assumptions about accessibility from a real-world perspective.
A way to work around this for me was to focus on aligning closely with established WCAG criteria and used accessibility testing tools (like screen readers, keyboard-only navigation, and contrast checkers).







Know why accessibility matters 
1231 in 6 people live with a disability. Ignoring accessibility means excluding a huge part of the world’s population.Accessibility = usability under stress. Ex- Captions help in noisy places, good contrast helps in sunlight, and clear design helps when people are tired or rushed.It’s about equity, not just compliance. Accessible products let people participate fully in work, education, and everyday life.




Appendix
WCAG Evaluation Spreadsheet 
Accessibility Guidelines Template
Stakeholder Presentation (View all violations here)
Project Research Report