What is accessibility testing? What are the best practices you should follow when testing website accessibility? These are some of the pressing questions that come to mind when designing a website. According to web content accessibility guidelines (WCAG) for web accessibility, software development companies have to follow a set of guidelines to ensure that their products are accessible to every type of user. When dealing with web design, development, and testing, you must follow these accessibility guidelines.
What is Accessibility Testing?
Accessibility testing is a practice that helps you to ensure that your web/mobile applications are accessible to users having disabilities such as:
- Hearing problems
- Motor impairments
- Visual impairments
When testing web accessibility, you can ensure that your web content is readable by every user without any barriers. As a sub-category of usability testing, you must include accessibility testing in your software testing life cycle.
Best Practices for Accessibility Testing
There are plenty of ways for testing accessibility, such as:
- Automated APIs , for example: Axe, pa11y.
- Browser plug-ins like web accessibility toolbar, Axe for chrome and firefox
- Accessibility inspector
- JAWS inspect
- The color contrast analyzer
But if you want to ensure that your web/mobile application is accessible to everyone, make sure your quality assurance testing partner follows the below mentioned practices:
- Prioritise Every Type of User
Technology is changing daily. New products or services get released into the market every day, thus increasing the competition. You should consider the users that will be using your software or website, no matter what their traits or beliefs are.
- Color Sensitivity
The color selection should be made by considering people with vision impairments. Do not include any color with too low or too high contrasts on the page. Also, avoid using color-driven instructions. For example, in case an error occurs while accessing the software or web page, the error message should get displayed instead of highlighting the field.
- Easy to Access Non-HTML and JavaScript
Non-HTML content like word documents and PDF should be easily accessible by the users. Also, ensure that JavaScript is handled properly in your web and mobile application. Else, various bugs might occur that can jeopardize the accessibility of your product.
- Conduct Accessibility Testing Early
A common mistake that development companies make is testing for accessibility in the later stages. It would be beneficial if you consider it in the early stages of test cycles. By doing so, you can detect the accessibility issues early on and fix them as soon as possible.
- Include Captions and Transcripts
If there are videos on your website, make sure they have captions embedded so that people with hearing challenges can also watch them. Similarly, for podcasts, make sure to add the complete transcripts. It would not only be beneficial for people with disabilities but for everyone.
Conclusion
As a leader of a web, mobile, or software development firm, you have to decide how and when accessibility testing should be done, how to measure standards, and whom to involve in testing. The best option is to outsource to a reliable QA testing provider such as QASource. It deals in customized and reliable accessibility testing services that will fit your budget and business requirements with ease.
