Automated testing
Are your accessibility testing tools providing accurate results?
Why it’s important
- Including automated testing throughout development can help quickly catch many accessibility errors(this link opens an external website).
- Automated testing cannot gaurantee that your product is accessible.
- Always combine automated testing with ongoing manual testing.
Next steps
- Use automated tools to quickly check for common errors in your browser. For example aXe(this link opens an external website), WAVE(this link opens an external website), HTML_CodeSniffer(this link opens an external website) or Equal Access Accessibility Checker(this link opens an external website).
- Integrate tools like axe-core(this link opens an external website), Lighthouse auditing(this link opens an external website), or AccessLint.js(this link opens an external website) into your development.
- If using Github a tool like AccessLint(this link opens an external website) can find accessibility issues in your pull requests.
- Understand the problems faced by people with slight to extreme vision problems. Use tools like the Mozilla plugin No Coffee Vision Simulator(this link opens an external website) or Chromium's Emulate vision deficiencies within the DevTools to simulate:
- colour blindness
- low vision
- visual snow, glare and ghosting
- obstructed visual field
- low contrast sensitivity
References
Resources
- Beware False Negatives(this link opens an external website)
- The Importance Of Manual Accessibility Testing(this link opens an external website)
- Web accessibility for developers(this link opens an external website)