Every business wants to increase the reach of its software application to as many users as possible. Yet, so many applications never attain their potential, just because the design or implementation of the application didn’t have every type of end-user in mind.
Is your testing approach keeping your application from being accessible to all?
What is Accessibility Testing?
In software QA, accessibility testing is the method of confirming that an application is usable for as many people as feasible, including people with disabilities such as vision impairment, hearing difficulties, and cognitive conditions.
By including various types of accessibility testing into your QA practices, your team can assure that all content within your web application is reachable to anyone without restrictions. Testing teams often include accessibility testing tools when performing these tests to assure their applications are compatible with assistive technology, incorporating speech recognition software, screen magnification software, screen reader software, and special keyboards.
Before the Web Accessibility Initiative, testers suggested how to test for accessibility without any real guidance. Thanks to the WAI, QA companies now have accessibility testing examples and detailed guidelines to follow so that they can produce the most effective accessibility test cases across development cycles.
Digital Accessibility Rules and Regulations
Accessibility testing isn’t simply a nice-to-have best practice—it’s the law. The government is on the team of the people in assuring that all technologies, including web-based and mobile applications, are accessible for all.
- Americans with Disabilities Act Section III: This law enforces that all domains such as schools, companies, and public buildings are accessible to everyone, incorporating web-based applications and technology.
- Title II of ADA: This law enforces that all applications, services, and activities provided by state and/or local governments are accessible to everyone, incorporating web-based applications and technology.
- Sections 504 and 508 of The Rehabilitation Act of 1973: Section 504 needs that reasonable accommodations be available for people with disabilities inside the workplace, educational institutions, and companies. Section 508 establishes requirements to be satisfied by these institutions so that technology is accessible for everyone.
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG): These protocols give accessibility testing examples and recommend kinds of accessibility testing so that development and QA teams can find ways to enhance application accessibility. WCAG suggests following these four main principles:
- Perceivable: All users can understand all displayed information being described, including how to use the application’s user interface.
- Operable: All users can navigate by all user interface components without problems or barriers.
- Understandable: All users can learn all displayed information being presented, including how to navigate by the user interface of an application.
- Robust: All users can certainly understand the content within an application through assistive technologies.
Implement best practices for accessibility testing so that your application is always accessible for all.
What Should Accessibility Testing Address?
Knowing how to do accessibility testing begins by examining the types of disabilities that need enhanced support during your application. Your accessibility test cases should confirm that your product can present a seamless experience for everyone, including those with the following disabilities:
- Vision: Difficulty seeing videos or reading text due to total blindness, color blindness, or vision impairment.
- Hearing: Difficulty hearing verbal communication or digital media because of deafness or hearing impairment.
- Mobility: Difficulty with physical movement, including utilizing physical requirements of technology, such as a keyboard or mouse.
- Cognitive: Difficulty memorizing, concentrating, or making decisions.
Types of Accessibility Testing
You can break down your strategy on how to perform accessibility testing into two categories: manual testing and automated testing. Like many kinds of QA testing, a strong accessibility testing procedure should apply both testing procedures for full testing coverage.
Here’s how best to implement both types of accessibility testing:
- Manual Testing: QA testers should manually test any test case that needs physical interaction with the application and the usability of the user interface over potential obstacles. Accessibility testing examples involve manually reviewing keyboard accessibility, style disablement, content scaling, UI structural elements, and text sizing. These kinds of tests can also rely on the support of accessibility testing tools to increase accuracy and performance during the testing process.
- Automated Testing: QA teams can further facilitate the process of testing for accessibility with automated testing tools created to detect errors across hundreds of web pages. Automated testing is perfect for analyzing design styling, image contrasting, and application functionality, which often can’t be manually tested.
Benefits of Accessibility Testing
1. Increases the website usage and market share:
By following the methods of web accessibility, it will be simpler for people with disabilities to access websites successfully and assures an effective increase in the traffic
2. Enhances the brand image:
The process of web accessibility not only eases in getting the website, but it also positively helps to improve the user’s approach and assures positive effect towards their website or application, and helps to develop the brand.
3. Makes the website accessible for society:
Performing the accessibility test efficiently helps the application to be equally accessible for people with disabilities and presents an equal number of opportunities. This method of accessing the web irrespective of the disabilities will eventually make an active participating society.
Conclusion
Leaders play an essential role in deciding how and when accessibility testing can be performed, whom to include in testing and how the standards can be measured. Organizations and leaders must have an eye on the accessibility rules of the product they build. Continuous monitoring or analysis of the standards, tools, and technologies should be done periodically and modifications or revisions must be done whenever needed. It is important to get that Accessibility is not just for “the disabled” but for everyone. So it will be a good thought to begin defining the needs of accessibility from the organization level itself!
If your team needs more guidance on integrating accessibility testing inside your development cycle, choose to team up with a reliable QA service provider like TestUnity. Our team of testing experts specializes in both manual testing and automation testing with years of experience performing accessibility tests for applications across domains.
Testunity is a SaaS-based technology platform driven by a vast community of testers & QAs spread around the world, powered by technology & testing experts to create the dedicated testing hub. Which is capable of providing almost all kind of testing services for almost all the platforms exists in software word.
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