Are The 2020 Presidential Candidate’s Websites ADA Compliant?

The 2020 election is quickly approaching & as I was researching the candidates that are currently running, I noticed that some of them lacked basic web accessibility compatibility. I thought it would be fun to take an objective look at all candidates running & give them a grade on how their website stacks up against a few of the guidelines from WCAG 2.0 A – do keep in mind that WCAG 2.0 AA is the standard in the industry.

The candidates below are being rated on the following guidelines:

• Ability/ease of use alternative navigation tools (ie. Keyboard only, voice activation)
• Proper alt-tags for all images on the website
• Captions on videos (if applicable) – YouTube’s auto-captioning is only 60-70% accurate according to the University of Minnesota Duluth.
• A logical website structure & content is presented in a meaningful order
• Is there an accessibility statement?

Again, this is a totally objective look at the candidate’s website & the grade is no way reflective of how I or Atilus feel about their policies. To achieve a rating of A the candidate’s site must successfully meet the guidelines above.

Since there are so many candidates currently in the running this will be broken into three parts & I will be providing an alphabetical list of candidates regardless of party affiliation.

Candidate #1 – Michael Bennet – Grade:D

https://michaelbennet.com/

When you first visit Bennet’s site there’s a popup to donate to his campaign & I immediately got stuck on the popup – there were no obvious highlights for any of the buttons. This means if I were unable to use a mouse, I would need to trial/error a way out of the popup to continue to the site.

• Ability/ease of use alternative navigation tools (ie. Keyboard only, voice activation) – very poor, lack of proper highlights to show where the tab cursor is
• Proper alt-tags for all images on the website – No
• Captions on videos (if applicable) – no, captioning was not provided by Bennet’s campaign. Relying on YouTube auto-captions.
• A logical website structure & content is presented in a meaningful order – Yes
• Is there an accessibility statement? – No

Candidate #2 – Joseph Biden – Grade: B-

https://joebiden.com

• Ability/ease of use alternative navigation tools (ie. Keyboard only, voice activation) – Reasonably good. The highlight for the cursor got lost a few times. Skip to main content button is available for screen readers but not for users using the tab only.
• Proper alt-tags for all images on the website – not all images had proper alt-tags
• Captions on videos (if applicable) – no, Biden’s campaign did not provide subtitles. Relying on YouTube’s auto-captioning.
• A logical website structure & content is presented in a meaningful order – Yes
• Is there an accessibility statement? Yes

Candidate #3 – Cory Booker – Grade: D

https://corybooker.com/

Similar to Bennet’s site the popup pretty much prevented me from entering the site sans mouse.

• Ability/ease of use alternative navigation tools – moderate I was able to follow along with the cursor after about 8 clicks (I have 0 clue where the first ones were).
• Proper alt-tags for all images on the website – no
• Captions on videos (if applicable) – captions were embedded within the video in a stylistic way, but the contrast needed was lacking on a consistent basis so words would get lost.
• A logical website structure & content is presented in a meaningful order – no
• Is there an accessibility statement? Yes

Candidate #4 Steve Bullock – Grade: B+

https://stevebullock.com/

• Ability/ease of use alternative navigation tools – Great! This is the first candidate website I’ve reviewed with an accessibility plugin.
• Proper alt-tags for all images on the website – Yes
• Captions on videos (if applicable) – No, the video was using YouTube auto-generated captions.
• A logical website structure & content is presented in a meaningful order – Yes
• Is there an accessibility statement? – No

Candidate #5 – Pete Buttigieg – Grade: A

https://peteforamerica.com/

• Ability/ease of use alternative navigation tools – Absolutely wonderful. I did not have any issues navigating
• Proper alt-tags for all images on the website – Yes
• Captions on videos (if applicable) – Yes, properly embedded within the video itself.
• A logical website structure & content is presented in a meaningful order – yes
• Is there an accessibility statement? – yes

Candidate #6 – Julián Castro – Grade: B+

https://www.julianforthefuture.com

• Ability/ease of use alternative navigation tools – Yes, utilizing accessibility plugin.
• Proper alt-tags for all images on the website – Most, banner images are missing alt-text
• Captions on videos (if applicable) – Yes, all videos with audio include captions
• A logical website structure & content is presented in a meaningful order – Yes
• Is there an accessibility statement? – Yes

Candidate #7 – John Delaney – Grade: D

https://www.johndelaney.com/

• Ability/ease of use alternative navigation tools – Moderate
• Proper alt-tags for all images on the website – No
• Captions on videos (if applicable) – Inconsistent. The main campaign video is relying on auto-generated captions, but the Q&A video has captions provided.
• A logical website structure & content is presented in a meaningful order – No
• Is there an accessibility statement? – No

There you have a quick overview of the first 7 candidates running in the 2020 election. Of these candidates, only one candidate received a grade of A. Three of the seven received a failing grade.

What are your thoughts? Do you think candidates should focus their time/efforts on web accessibility? Let me know in the comments!

Be on the lookout for parts 2 & 3 coming in the next few weeks!