Accessibility Testing – Software Testing

Accessibility Testing is a critical aspect of software testing aimed at ensuring that applications are usable by people with various disabilities, such as visual, auditory, motor, or cognitive impairments. This testing verifies that the software complies with accessibility standards like WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) and is inclusive for all users.

By performing accessibility testing, developers can create more user-friendly, inclusive, and compliant software applications that provide a better experience for everyone, including those with disabilities.

What is Accessibility Testing?

is one of the Software Testing, in which the process of testing the degree of ease of use of a software application for individuals with certain disabilities. It is performed to ensure that any new component can easily be accessible by physically disabled individuals despite any respective handicaps. Accessibility testing is part of the system testing process and is somehow similar to usability testing. In the accessibility testing process, the tester uses the system or component as it would be used by individuals with disabilities.

Individuals can have disabilities like visual disability, hearing disability, learning disability, or non-functional organs. Accessibility testing is a subset of Usability testing where the users under consideration are specific people with disabilities. 

Accessibility Testing

Example of Accessibility Testing

Here’s a simpler explanation of primary examples in Accessibility Testing with proper research and bold SEO optimized keywords:

Color Contrast

• Description: Testing the color contrast of text against its background.
• Purpose: To ensure it meets the WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) standard, providing a minimum contrast ratio for normal and large text. This helps users with visual impairments read the content easily.

Text Alternatives

• Description: Verifying that images have appropriate alt text or alternative text.
• Purpose: For users who cannot see images, ensuring images have alt attributes or aria-labels that describe them. This helps screen readers convey the content to visually impaired users.

Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) Testing

• Description: Ensuring that ARIA roles and attributes are correctly applied.
• Purpose: To enhance the screen reader experience by correctly labeling interactive elements like buttons, form controls, and live regions. This makes navigation and interaction smoother for users relying on assistive technologies.

Keyboard Accessibility

• Description: Testing navigation of the website or app using only the keyboard (e.g., the “Tab” key).
• Purpose: To ensure users can access, focus, and activate all interactive elements, such as links, buttons, and form controls, using keyboard shortcuts. This is crucial for users with motor disabilities who cannot use a mouse.

By focusing on these aspects in Accessibility Testing, developers can create more inclusive, user-friendly, and compliant software that enhances the experience for all users, including those with disabilities.

Why should focus on Accessibility Testing?

Focusing on Accessibility Testing is essential for several key reasons:

1. Legal Compliance

• Many countries have laws and regulations that mandate digital accessibility. For example, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in the United States and the European Accessibility Act (EAA) in the European Union require that websites and applications be accessible to people with disabilities.
• Ensuring compliance with these laws helps avoid legal issues and potential lawsuits.

2. Inclusivity and Equal Access

• Accessibility Testing ensures that all users, regardless of their disabilities, can use and benefit from your software.
• This inclusivity is crucial for creating equal access to information and services, allowing everyone to participate fully in the digital world.

3. Improved User Experience

• By making software accessible, you improve the overall user experience.
• Features like easy navigation, clear content structure, and alternative text for images benefit all users, not just those with disabilities.
• A better user experience can lead to increased satisfaction and loyalty.

4. Broader Audience Reach

• Approximately 15% of the global population has some form of disability.
• By focusing on accessibility, you can reach a broader audience, expanding your market potential and user base.

5. Enhanced SEO and Performance

• Accessibility improvements often align with SEO best practices.
• For example, using proper headings, alt text for images, and clear navigation not only make your site more accessible but also improve your search engine rankings.
• This can lead to better visibility and increased traffic.

6. Positive Brand Image

• Demonstrating a commitment to accessibility enhances your brand’s reputation.
• It shows that your organization values inclusivity and social responsibility, which can positively influence public perception and brand loyalty.

7. Competitive Advantage

• By offering accessible software, you differentiate your product in the market.
• Competitors who overlook accessibility may lose out on a significant portion of potential users.
• Providing an inclusive experience can give you a competitive edge.

8. Future-Proofing

• As technology evolves, accessibility standards and user expectations will continue to grow.
• Investing in accessibility now ensures that your software remains relevant and usable for all users in the future.

By prioritizing Accessibility Testing, you create a more inclusive, compliant, and user-friendly product that benefits everyone, while also meeting legal requirements and enhancing your brand.

How to Do Accessibility Testing?

Accessibility Testing can be performed in 2 ways:

1. Manual Accessibility Testing
2. Automated Accessibility Testing
3. Hybrid Accessibility Testing

1. Manual Accessibility Testing

There are various tools available in the market to test the accessibility of a software application but many available tools are highly costly and/or are less skilled as per requirements. Therefore, manual testing is performed to check the accessibility of the software product. For example:

• Test brightness of software: Check the brightness of the software product. Check whether it is adjustable or not. Check if is it good for a person with less eyesight.
• Test the sound of software: Check the sound performance of the software. Check whether it is properly usable by a deaf person.
• Testing for captions: Check that the caption is visible and expressive. For example, on websites the images may take time to load in that case good captions help to understand what is in the picture and video.
• Modifying font size to large: Check the availability of the large font size and use the large font size.
• Use high contrast mode: High contrast mode helps to highlight the website’s content. 
• Turning off cascading style sheet (CSS): Turning off CSS helps to check the background color, text style, and text presentation style.
• Use field label: The field label is what is seen while viewing the template. It is useful while filling out the form so that one can fill out the necessary information while signing up or while placing the order. 
• Testing zooming: Test the zoom option to see if the image is visible or not.
• Skip Navigation: Tests if clicking Ctrl+Home moves the focus to the top of the page or not. This is helpful for people with motor disabilities.

2. Automated Accessibility Testing

Automation is widely used in different testing techniques. In the automated process, there are several automated tools for accessibility testing. These tools include:

• WebAnywhere: It is a screen reader tool and it requires no special installation.
• Hera: It is used to check the style of the software application.
• Designer: This tool is useful for testing the software from the viewpoint of visually impaired people. 
• Vischeck: This tool helps to reproduce the image in various forms and helps to visualize how the image will look when it is accessed by different types of users. 

3. Hybrid Accessibility Testing

The Hybrid Accessible method is always the best method to ensure the website is accessible. At first, you can use only a few features such as navigating and scrolling the page with the keyboard and are not able to test with the help of any software.

Understanding Digital Accessibility Testing Standards

Understanding Digital Accessibility Testing Standards is crucial for ensuring that websites and applications are accessible to all users, including those with disabilities. Here are the primary standards:

1. Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)

• Description: A set of guidelines developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to ensure web content is accessible to people with disabilities.
• Levels: WCAG 2.1 is divided into three levels of conformance: A (basic), AA (mid-range), and AAA (highest).

2. Section 508

• Description: A U.S. federal law requiring that all electronic and information technology developed, procured, maintained, or used by the federal government be accessible to people with disabilities.
• Standards: Aligns closely with WCAG guidelines.

3. Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)

• Description: A civil rights law that prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities in all areas of public life, including websites and online services.
• Compliance: Ensures that digital content is accessible, often using WCAG as a reference standard.

4. European Accessibility Act (EAA)

• Description: A directive from the European Union that sets common accessibility requirements for certain products and services, including digital content.
• Scope: Includes websites, mobile apps, and electronic communications.

5. EN 301 549

• Description: A European standard for ICT products and services, ensuring accessibility for people with disabilities.
• Alignment: Harmonized with WCAG and Section 508 standards.

6. Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA)

• Description: A set of technical specifications and guidelines to improve the accessibility of web content and applications, especially dynamic content and advanced user interface controls.
• Focus: Enhances interaction for users relying on assistive technologies, like screen readers.

Understanding these digital accessibility testing standards ensures that your software meets legal requirements and provides an inclusive experience for all users.

Legal Acts Followed in Different Countries

These legal acts ensure that digital content and services are accessible to people with disabilities, promoting inclusivity and equal access across various regions.

Types of Disability

These are the following types of disability:

Use Cases for Digital Accessibility Testing

E-commerce Websites

• Ensuring that online shopping platforms are accessible to users with disabilities, such as providing alternative text for product images and ensuring keyboard navigation through the shopping process.

Educational Portals and Learning Management Systems (LMS)

• Verifying that educational websites and LMS platforms are accessible to students with disabilities, including providing transcripts for audio lectures and ensuring compatibility with screen readers.

Government Portals and Services

• Testing government websites to ensure they comply with accessibility standards, allowing citizens with disabilities to access information, complete forms, and utilize online services seamlessly.

Healthcare Applications

• Checking accessibility of healthcare apps for patients with disabilities, ensuring functionalities like scheduling appointments, accessing medical records, and receiving alerts are accessible via assistive technologies.

Banking and Financial Services Platforms

• Verifying that banking websites and financial service apps provide accessible features for users with disabilities, such as secure navigation using keyboards, and clear text for financial information.

Benefits of Accessibility Testing

• Efficient access: Accessibility testing makes sure that the product provides easy and efficient access to users with disabilities or challenges.
• Increase market share: It helps to increase the audience reach by making the product disabled-friendly and increasing the target audience thus increasing the market share.
• Improves efficiency: Accessibility testing improves the maintainability and efficiency of the product.
• Legal compliance: Product companies can avoid a host of legal tangles and penalties by implementing accessibility testing for their products and services.
• Improve code quality: Accessibility testing increases the scope of usability testing and creates a high-quality codebase for the finished product and services.
• Improved SEO: Accessibility-friendly websites contain rich text content, thus enabling search engines to locate them while looking up relevant content easily.

Accessibility Testing Tools

Below are the top 5 accessibility testing tools:

1. QA Wolf

QA Wolf is a platform that helps you automate accessibility testing for your web applications. Think of it as a tool that checks if your website is usable by everyone, including people with disabilities.

• Inclusivity: Ensures your website can be used by people with disabilities.
• Legal Compliance: Many countries have laws requiring accessible websites.
• Better User Experience: Improves the overall user experience for everyone.

2. Wave

The WAVE tool was developed by WebAIM to evaluate the accessibility of web content. It evaluates the accessibility of web content by annotating the copy of the web page. 

• It performs accessibility evaluation on the browser and does not save anything on the server.
• It can identify many accessibility and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) errors.
• It also facilitates human evaluation of the web content.

3. SortSite

SortSite is a one-click user experience testing tool for Mac, OS X, and Windows. This tool is used for websites, inside or outside the firewall.

• This tool is compatible with Mobile browsers, Desktop browsers, and Internet Explorer.
• It checks for HTTP error codes and script errors.
• It scans the entire website for quality issues including browser compatibility, accessibility, broken links, etc.

4. JAWS

Job Access With Speech (JAWS) is the world’s most popular screen reader. It is developed for individuals whose vision loss prevents them from seeing the screen content and navigating with a mouse.

• It includes two multi-lingual synthesizers, Eloquence, and Vocalizer Expressive.
• It works with IE, Firefox, and Microsoft Office and supports Windows and touchscreen gestures.
• It provides Braille input from the Braille Keyboard and also includes drivers for Braille display.

5. QualityLogic

It provides a combination of automated and manual testing services to evaluate website accessibility. 

• This tool is used by visually impaired QA engineers who know exactly what is needed to make a website accessible.
• It helps to discover issues like structural issues, contrast errors, etc.
• It also creates a compliance report containing a summary of errors detected.

Conclusion

In these software Engineering the Accessibility testing help to the Disabled Persons and the normal Peoples also. If Due to complexity of Accessibility testing guideline for the web-application for avoiding these we try to develop the normal web-application or the website for the normal user and other for disabled persons.

Frequently Asked Questions on Accessibility Testing

What is QA accessibility?

QA accessibility ensures that software meets standards for usability by individuals with disabilities, fostering inclusive digital experiences.

Which tool is best for accessibility testing?

The best tool for accessibility testing depends on specific needs and preferences, with options like axe Accessibility Checker, WAVE, Pa11y, Deque Axe, JAWS, and NVDA being popular choices.

What are the three types of accessibility?

 Emotional, Functional and Technical. 

Myths about Accessibility Testing

Below are some of the myths associated with accessibility testing:

Myths: Creating Accessibility Testing is Costly.

Fact: Accessibility testing is not constant if the accessibility issues are identified at the design phase besides the extensive testing, thus the cost and extra rework can be reduced.

Myths: Accessibility testing is Time-consuming to convert inaccessible websites to accessible.

Fact: It is not important to integrate all modifications at one time, prioritize things and work on the basic needs first.

Myths: Accessibility testing is boring.

Fact: It is not necessary to include only text in the website to make it accessible, images can also be included to make it more attractive but the major concern is to make it accessible for every category of the person.

Myths: Accessibility testing is only for disabled persons.

Fact: It is a myth that accessibility is for only disabled individuals, all types of users can use accessibility testing and enhance the credibility of the software.

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