An Introduction to Accessibility Testing

Accessibility testing is a part of usability testing that takes into consideration both users with and without disabilities. In particular, it concentrates on analyzing applications, mobile programs, and websites. Since 15 percent of the world inhabitants has some kind of disability, and three percent of those individuals have significant disabilities, access testing is critical.

Now, consider how much time you spend daily using your smart phone can make sure computers and smart devices may be used by everyone, regardless of age or ability. We don’t want anybody to miss out on the electronic age. It ought to be a priority for every person to make certain that every new electronic part of our lives”can be accessible by physically handicapped individuals.”

A site or a mobile (web) app puts together the efforts of different teams and people, where many of them need to know about Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WACG). Both development and design should ideally be compliant to those guidelines and to our expectations.

We expect a site to become responsive, have fine effects, like counters, motion elements or graphics with parallax effects, a clean layout, and also to represent the brand. A mobile app should also add value, giving the user something additional compared to the website.

But can a screen reader identify all of the elements? Do each of the pictures have descriptions? Do each of the movies have subtitles? Do each of the icons have tags? Are all the elements tagged correctly? Can I navigate to every page using just the keyboard?

These are only a couple of queries that designers, developers, and QA need to inquire at various phases of a job. Knowing how a screen reader works or the way colorblind folks may adjust the colors in their screens can produce the creation and testing process a lot simpler.

Here are the four principles on which the WCAG are established:

Perceivable info and consumer interface.
Operable user navigation and interface.
Understandable information and user interface.
Robust content and trustworthy interpretation.
Perceivable Infomation and User Interface

This principle specifies everything that has to do with text options for non-text articles, captions and other options for multimedia, distinct presentations of content, and also to make certain content is easier to read and listen to.

Every image, including buttons, icons, and images, video, graphs, have to be properly labeled and described for a screen reader or a non-visual browser to demonstrate information correctly. Videos also needs to have subtitles, as well as audio narrations for important visual content from the movie. The text needs to be able to adapt quickly, such as custom colors, text size, or another customization that facilitates studying, as well as high contrast all the time.

Images with parallax effect (in which the picture stays fixed while the material moves in addition to it) or flashing in certain intervals, can lead to nausea and epileptic attacks. Even though they might appear good, designers and programmers should take sensible care when using these elements on a web site.

Operable User Interface and Navigation

A site needs to be navigable and interactive entirely through the keyboard, which is essential for men and women who use a text browser or are not able to use a mouse for a variety of reasons.

Hierarchy and structure need to become a priority here in order to make it easier to browse via the menu and the related pages. JavaScript will mostly be disabled in visual browsers, or screen readers might not have the ability to find those elements in JavaScript wrappers.

Another issue worth addressing in this segment are the login timeouts or even the re-authentication without any data loss, or text that disappears after the ideal”reading time” Times have to be corrected to slow readers and to those that need more time to complete a form or triple check prior to confirming a trade.

Responsive design is a must-have at this time, mostly because of smartphones and tablets, but in addition, it needs to appear fine and not break whether it’s magnified rather than made smaller.

Understandable Information and User Interface

Some things that seem obvious might not be for applications, especially for text-to-speech applications. The language on a site needs to be very clear. Also, using the exact same arrangement, and method of where information or descriptions have been on different pages, can help users understand how to browse the website.

Types and other interaction can be difficult and confusing for some people and consequently lead to errors. An example could be kinds that possess the description within the field and the description disappears after the scanning starts, rather than maybe moving above or beneath the typing. Error message descriptions become very helpful to describe what was amiss and help users to fix the error made.

Robust Content and Trustworthy Interpretation

This principle is about compatibility with older, newer, and coming accessible technology. A markup language is the safest way to maintain technology compatible with different browsers, assistive technology.

Access Testing Can Really Improve the Quality of the Website/App
It is important to comprehend the difference between getting an accessible site and a website compliant to each the principles that are accessible. Same is true for mobile apps — the principles can be applied to mobile, such as text-to-speech, distinct colours, app architecture, text size variants, and much more.

Not every website or mobile app has to be completely available, but making small modifications, such as tags, non-text element descriptions, a clear structure and better contrast, the experience can be improved for all users.

This may seem like usability testing, and you’re right. Usability testing is all about how easy it’s to use a system, in this circumstance, sites and mobile (web) apps. In turn, accessibility testing simply means these technologies available to all.

As you see, the core testing principle is the same for the two, but availability testing goes a step further, analyzing elements a bit deeper. Both rely on ease of use, bringing user satisfaction with both layout and information, and avoiding errors.

But, it is important to distinguish between complying with a regular and optimizing the availability of a website. Ideally, both are the same, however any standard may neglect to:

Address the needs of people with disabilities.
Balance the requirements of people with differing disabilities.
Meet those needs to optimum techniques.
On the lookout for a target audience and learn which kind of people will search for the information on your site or your mobile (web) app, can help you focus on testing the vital things for specific groups of people.

Similar to usability testing, accessibility testing may also be carried out in an automated way. Frameworks like Selenium and Appium is readily utilized to write evaluations, with easy maintenance, as they’re cross-platform. Testing is essential in all of the development phases and cannot be skipped. Test automation can easily be incorporated into any DevOps process, giving nearly real time feedback, dependent on the period tests are conducting. Regression testing should also definitely be on almost any pre-release checklist and on every additional upgrade.