Intro to Accessibility Testing for Accessibility

Learning objective: By the end of this lesson students will be able to determine which accessibility testing methods should be employed to ensure digital products are accessible to all users.

Automated vs. manual testing

We’ve already talked about a few ways to test our sites to make sure they are accessible, including online tools and DevTools. Further testing can be done to identify and fix any accessibility problems in our software.

There are two main ways to test for accessibility: automated testing and manual testing.

Automated testing

Automated testing uses tools to scan a site’s potential accessibility problems. These tools can be beneficial for identifying common problems, but they cannot find all accessibility issues. An example is the accessibility DevTools in Chrome and Firefox to evaluate for appropriate contrast.

Manual testing

Manual testing involves testing a digital product or service by hand. This is the best way to find all the accessibility problems in a product or service. However, manual testing can be time-consuming and expensive. An example of this is the contrast checker provided by WebAIM.

Which type of testing should we use?

The best approach to testing for accessibility is to use a combination of automated and manual testing. Automated testing can help us quickly identify common accessibility problems, while manual testing can help us find all the accessibility problems in our software.

Here is an example of how we can use automated and manual testing together:

1. We can use an automated testing tool to scan our software for potential accessibility problems.
2. We can then review the results of the automated testing tool to identify any accessibility problems that need to be fixed.
3. We can then manually test our software to find any accessibility problems the automated testing tool did not find.