Web Design in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

Expert Review

Expert review testing involves one or more accessibility specialists reviewing a web site, page, or set of pages to perform a heuristic analysis and evaluation of conformance against a set of criteria, such as W3C or Section 508 standards. The analysis is based on experience and common “rules of thumb” in terms of accessibility issues.

Once the review is completed, the reviewers usually prepare a report that outlines specific accessibility issues, methods for improving accessibility, and areas that need to be tested further by users with various disabilities (often referred to as “pan-disability” testing). They may or may not assign a “severity” to each issue, but will likely make prioritized recommendations on those items that should be fixed first and those that should be fixed but may be less critical.