To the uninitiated, “accessibility testing tools” may sound intimidating. And that’s fair, given that some website accessibility testing tools have a larger learning curve than others and require contextual knowledge to fully utilize. However, for those looking to dip their feet in the website accessibility pond, there are several tools available make you the best accessibility tester you can be!

What is accessibility testing?

Simply put, an accessibility test is the act of assessing the experience of someone using assistive technology (which people with disabilities use) to consume digital content. The most inclusive digital experience is one that accommodates people accessing the internet in a variety of ways. Read on for a sample of the accessibility testing tools and methods that can be utilized to make your digital content accessible to as many people as possible.

Color contrast testing

Imagine you’re outside on a sunny day and your phone beeps with a text. You squint at it, but the sun is so bright it’s impossible to make out what is on the screen. People with low vision experience this every day. Appropriate contrast for text makes it easier for them to read headlines and content on physical objects and digital screens. One of TPGi’s website accessibility testing tools, the Colour Contrast Analyser, makes it very easy for designers and developers to check if they are using colors that conform to WCAG guidelines for contrast. Try it for yourself and you’ll see how simple it is to use. This is a site accessibility test that anyone can benefit from!

Screen reader testing

Have you ever wondered how blind and visually impaired people use the internet? They rely on assistive technology called screen readers, the most popular being JAWS and NVDA. (Also note that VoiceOver, TalkBack, and Narrator are all built into devices already and can be used for website accessibility testing today.) As the name implies, screen readers literally “read” aloud everything on a computer screen. However, the website needs to be coded in such a way that the screen reader can make sense of it.

Try to imagine if you were trying to follow a recipe to bake a cake, but the ingredients were interspersed with the directions, and the directions themselves were not in any logical order. It would be significantly harder to bake a cake with instructions like this!

This is a bit like the experience of a screen reader user on improperly coded websites. If a site does not have correct markup for screen readers, navigating a website becomes a disjointed and disorienting experience during which users are frequently stymied when trying to complete a task or do virtually anything online.

JAWS Inspect is a tool that allows a visual user to recreate the JAWS screen reader experience so they can conduct web accessibility testing without having to learn how to use a screen reader. Let me explain: JAWS has a pretty steep learning curve, with a myriad of keystrokes that require some effort to master. JAWS Inspect transforms what would be screen reader speech into text so you can read what visually impaired people would hear. It’s user-friendly enough that even someone who’s just getting familiar with accessible coding can start using it right away for website accessibility testing.

Accessible website HTML testing

For those with coding experience and who are looking to acquire deeper insight into how particular elements or components are being exposed to a browser’s accessibility API, applications like Apple’s Accessibility Inspector and Vispero’s ARC Toolkit are great free accessibility testing tools.

Using these tools, you can inspect a document at large or drill down to specific elements to determine how they’re being exposed to browsers, thus determining how those browsers are exposing such elements to screen readers. For instance, using Apple’s Accessibility Inspector on a standard web page, you can use the mouse pointer to click on large text to determine if it’s contained within an element properly exposed as a heading, and its level, as defined by Apple’s accessibility API.

Accessibility Viewer will allow for similar features on the Windows platform. Exposing the IA2/MSAA and UIA mappings for different elements of a web page, depending on if you are testing in Chrome, Firefox, IE11, or Edge. Such website accessibility tests are critical components of a more comprehensive review.

Safari, Chrome, and Firefox also all have accessibility panels to their developer tools, which contain a series of features to let developers dive into how elements and components are being exposed by the browsers, as well as other unique features depending on the browser. For instance, Safari’s developer tools has an Audit panel built right in, and Firefox has a series of beta features to allow for drilling down to accessibility issues in a particular document.

Single page web accessibility testing

For single page web accessibility testing on the web, try ARC Toolkit: a free professional-level accessibility testing tool available as a Google Chrome extension. While this tool is not an optimal choice for those without any experience in accessibility remediation, it does provide a comprehensive view of accessibility code level issues in a user-friendly format. The ARC Toolkit uses the ARC ruleset, which are the same rules used by default in the ARC platform. ARC Toolkit not only identifies errors and warnings, but also provides instructions for remediation. It’s almost your one-stop-shop for single-page accessibility testing for the web. (However, note that it is one of many tools used by the experts when conducting an accessibility review and should not be used exclusively during professional remediation for comprehensive work.)

Automated accessibility testing tools

While all the previously mentioned testing tools are exceptionally helpful in conducting manual website accessibility testing, if you’re looking for an automated accessibility testing tool that can scan your site at a predetermined cadence, there are plenty of options to choose from. TPGi’s monitoring and analytics solution, ARC Monitoring, is one such tool. You’ll be able to dig deep into the code for nitty-gritty remediation and also use its insights to discover and resolve root problems instead of playing catch-up all the time.

As you can see, there are plenty of options to choose from when exploring accessibility testing tools. Don’t feel the need to master all of them immediately! First, congratulate yourself on taking accessibility into account when building web content – you’re ahead of the curve. Then take some time to play around with the tools; the best accessibility testing tools are the ones that you find the most helpful. As you read up on accessibility testing and explore the tools firsthand, the learning curve will start to flatten out and you’ll be a lot more confident about digging deeply into your projects.

Those with more experience with accessibility testing can read our list of accessibility testing tools the TPGi accessibility engineers use on a regular basis. However, if you’re still feeling overwhelmed by the idea of conducting accessibility testing on your websites and applications yourself, you can always get help from the accessibility experts. Contact us with any accessibility concerns today!