Leveraging AI to Improve Web Accessibility: Building an Automated Audit Workflow

Greetings from the Project Team

Hello from Waterloo! We're a team of five first-year students from the University of Waterloo, with backgrounds in fields like financial analysis and risk management, chemical engineering, business, math, and nanotechnology. As part of the Waterloo Experience (WE) Accelerate program, we had the chance to join Poket to take on a meaningful challenge: closing the accessibility gap in Poket’s software solution.

Here’s a look into our journey.

Why Accessibility Matters

Many of us are accustomed to using websites and software solutions that feel intuitive, sleek and easy to use. However, the same digital platforms might be difficult to navigate and use for a person with a disability. Unfortunately, accessibility is often not a first-class citizen in the design and delivery of many software solutions. 

For users with visual, auditory, cognitive, or motor impairments, inaccessible web content doesn’t just make for a bad experience - it can make vital information and tools completely unusable.

Why It Matters to Poket

Poket’s platform powers data collection around the world. This can be anything from farmer-generated data for climate-smart agriculture projects in the USA to community-led data collection and participant-led monitoring for an international health NGO. To support Poket’s mission, our solutions must be accessible to all users, regardless of ability.

Accessibility isn’t a side feature or an after-thought. It’s fundamental to creating inclusive, intuitive and universal software.

Our Solution: Automating Accessibility Audits

Maintaining accessibility across a platform is a complex, ongoing effort. It is an even bigger challenge for a small team supporting global operations. As Poket’s tools evolve, it’s critical to ensure that every new feature continues to meet accessibility standards.

That’s where our project comes in. We are designing an automated workflow to regularly audit Poket’s software solutions for gaps in accessibility, based on Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Level AA.

By combining industry-standard tools and practices in automation and accessibility testing, our workflow will:

• Automatically scan Poket’s platform on a periodic basis

• Detect accessibility gaps across pages and web contents

• Flag concerns for the design and engineering team

This solution allows Poket to maintain high accessibility standards while scaling its platform and reaching new users.

Implementation

We used n8n, a workflow automation platform, to orchestrate the different steps that are typically performed manually to run an audit. The diagram below shows an instance of the workflow:

There are different nodes in this workflow. Each node represents an action which is typically performed by a human auditor. 

• The workflow can be executed manually, but has also been configured to run automatically every month. 

• After the workflow is kicked off, a node takes over the role of a human auditor and logs in to the portal. After logging in, it browses different pages of the software system and inspects the different elements as an auditor would - using WCAG as the compliance guideline. 

• The workflow then automatically packages all the gaps, formats them and generates a human-readable report

• The report is sent as an email to the Operations team

• The report is also sent to a Slack channel for the Engineering team to prioritize and action

The workflow takes on multiple personas - it audits the software system autonomously, it generates a report for Ops/Engineering and alerts the team of any gaps that should be addressed. It is our all-in-one auditor and analyst.

Looking Ahead

We’re excited to contribute to Poket’s ongoing mission to make data collection tools and survey software inclusive, reliable, and accessible for all. With the support of smart automation and a thoughtful design process, accessibility doesn’t have to come at the cost of innovation - it can grow right alongside it!