Accessibility testing and tools

Testing and tools

Many aspects of your site can affect accessibility, from the font you choose to your ecommerce color palette. It’s up to designers and developers to find ways to create websites and web content that can be consumed by anyone—whether they live with a disability or not. 

While the following tools can’t determine whether or not your site is accessible (this can only be accomplished through human assessment), they can help you on your path to accessibility by cutting down the time and effort it would take to implement a thorough evaluation. This will help you identify and reduce the amount of accessibility barriers on your website and in your content—improving its overall quality.

Screen readers

Screen readers are an integral part of accessibility testing. Here are some tools to leverage while conducting accessibility testing/audits:

• VoiceOver for Mac/iOS and Safari
• JAWS for Internet Explorer
• NVDA for Windows FireFox
• ChromeVox for Google Chrome (Chrome Extension Link)

Automated testing

When it comes to accessibility testing, no tool can replace manual testing done by an accessibility professional. However, there are quite a few automated testing tools available to find (and resolve) some of the simpler accessibility issues quickly and easily. 

Example - WAVE

WAVE is a free, community-built tool designed to facilitate web accessibility testing by providing developers with a visual representation of issues directly on their page. This test assesses accessibility issues ranging from color contrast to ARIA attributes, and is based on compliance standards from both WCAG and Section 508. The browser-based WAVE tool evaluates your web content after CSS has been applied, but does not evaluate any JavaScript sources. If your site has a lot of dynamic content from scripts, you should opt for the WAVE Chrome extension—which boasts 100 per cent private and secure reporting and is great for assessing non-public (e.g. password protected) sites.

Other notable accessibility tools include:

• aXe
• A chrome extension tool that provides support for WCAG 2.0 
• Accessibility Insights
• A stand-alone app that works across Android, Web, and Windows with browser extensions available
• AChecker
• Test your web pages by entering the URL, uploading an HTML file, or by pasting the source code directly into the tool. After submitting your page, ‘AChecker’ scans your HTML and produces a report that identifies certain, likely, and potential accessibility problems
• Lighthouse Accessibility Audit
• Open-source, automated tool to improve web page quality made by Google
• Features an accessibility test that provides a report to help improve website accessibility

Visual tools

Color Oracle

Color Oracle is a free app that simulates various forms of colorblindness by adding a full-screen filter throughout your operating system (and works with Windows, Mac OS, and Linux). Filter options are set to more severe forms of color blindness. If your design passes with these filters, then you know it will also be easily readable by those with minor color blindness. Given that you can turn on these filters easily, this is a great tool for visual designers who want to evaluate their designs as they work.

Photosensitive epilepsy analysis tool

The Trace Center's Photosensitive Epilepsy Analysis Tool (PEAT) is a free, downloadable resource for developers to identify seizure risks in their web content and software. The process helps determine whether animations or videos you use within your web content are likely to cause seizures for users with epilepsy.