KPI, metrics, targets, measurements...ouch! How am I supposed to understand these anyway?
Yeah. Good question. I wondered that myself.
Both a key performance indicator (KPI) and a metric will provide insight into what your organisation is doing to achieve its accessibility objectives. A lot of the times, I use KPI and metric interchangeably. That's not entirely correct.
A KPI is a specific, measurable value that demonstrates how effectively your website is achieving key accessibility objectives. A metric on the other hand is a quantifiable measure you can use to track and assess the status of a specific accessibility process.
Both are indeed quantitative measures you can use to evaluate web accessibility. You can track both over time to see progress and identify areas you need to work on. And you can use both to set objectives and benchmarks.
But KPIs are generally higher-level and more strategic measures that align with overall accessibility goals. Metrics are often more granular and can feed into KPIs. You can combine multiple metrics towards a single KPI.
For example, take accessibility compliance as an objective and your product's accessibility compliance rate as a KPI. This KPI would measure the overall accessibility compliance of your released product. The number of critical accessibility issues identified in production would directly inform this KPI. So would the number of customers complaining about accessibility. As well as a few other more technical metrics like the percentage of user interface components with proper ARIA attributes, the number of alt text descriptions added or the number of color contrast issues resolved.
While KPIs usually focus on outcomes, metrics can measure both processes and outcomes.
More important than what they mean is how to choose them!
Appropriate KPIs and metrics will:
- align with your organisation's accessibility goals
- be measurable and actionable
- focus on areas that have the most impact on users with disabilities
- consider both technical compliance and user experience
Tracking KPIs allows you to determine if you're close to meeting your objectives. I recommend around 3-5 KPIs for accessibility. You want something that's manageable in terms of data collection and analysis, while maintaining focus on the most critical aspects of accessibility. Any less and you won't have a comprehensive view. Any more can lead to information overload and dilute your focus.