In a nutshell: About 15% of the population lives with a disability; an inaccessible website excludes a significant portion of its audience. Accessibility testing ensures that your website is usable by everyone, which expands your user base, reduces legal risks, and improves SEO. This guide explains what accessibility testing is, why it matters, and how to perform it.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 15% of the world’s population (approximately 1 billion people) lives with a disability that affects their ability to use digital tools. In this context, the accessibility testing is no longer merely an ethical choice or a “good deed” in the context of corporate social responsibility (CSR)—it is a strategic imperative for any company seeking to offer truly inclusive digital experiences.
In this article, we explore why accessibility is a major driver of growth and how to adopt an effective methodology for your QA processes.
What is Accessibility Testing?
As part of usability testing, accessibility tests ensure digital products and applications are accessible to people with disabilities, including those with blindness, hearing impairments, or cognitive disorders.
Web accessibility is measured based on the following four principles:
1. Perceptibility: the ability of user interface components or information to be perceived by users through at least one of their senses.
2. Usability: the ability of all users to interact with the application's components or navigation.
3. Understandability: the ease with which users with disabilities can understand the information presented and the application’s interface.
4. Robustness: The extent to which the content can be correctly interpreted using various technologies or user devices.
Users with disabilities will be unable to use the application or website if these principles are not adhered to.
Why are accessibility tests important?
The growth of digital technologies and applications means that almost everyone is becoming increasingly dependent on connected devices.
The reality is that not everyone can interact with these devices in the same way, and many factors must be taken into account to ensure a positive user experience for anyone who uses your website or app.
In addition to people with disabilities, accessibility testing may also be aimed at older adults, children, left-handed users, and non-native speakers, for example.
Under the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0, governments around the world are working to make software products accessible to people with disabilities through government legislation.
Key Benefits of Regular and Rigorous Accessibility Testing
Grow the user base
Websites that are not accessible have a smaller user base, and accessibility testing can make software products accessible to a wider user base.
To provide some context, 70% of websites worldwide are inaccessible to people with disabilities, which represents a huge loss of revenue and a major market opportunity.
Cost Reduction
Delayed accessibility testing can lead to more bugs and costly fixes.
Accessibility testing should be part of any end-to-end (E2E) testing process—starting from the very beginning of the development process.
Legal Compliance
The EU is seeking to establish clear requirements for companies that develop technologies based on WCAG standards, and to make these requirements mandatory for public organizations for now, and potentially for private organizations as well in the future.
To take an example from the United States, Amazon was sued in 2018 over barriers to accessibility for blind or visually impaired users.
The marketplace could not be used in conjunction with screen readers and refreshable Braille displays. Although the lawsuit was settled amicably, Amazon had to make some adjustments to the website's interface.
Improving Code Quality
Fixing accessibility-related errors can result in a higher-quality codebase for the finished product or website.
This is largely due to accessibility testing tools that identify various coding errors that could otherwise lead to usability issues and software bugs.
In addition to causing fewer bugs, high-quality code provides a better UX (user experience) and faster loading times on any device.
Enhanced SEO Performance
Accessible websites contain rich text, which allows search engines to find them and makes it easier to locate relevant content.
A higher SEO ranking means that search engines are likely to drive more traffic to the website, which will result in more conversions and revenue.
In addition, accessibility testing helps create apps and websites with simpler interfaces and navigation, thereby reducing bounce rates and encouraging more users to use them regularly.
How do you perform accessibility tests?
Regular accessibility testing allows QA teams to gain a more comprehensive understanding of accessibility issues, which is nearly impossible with quarterly or annual testing.
Incorporating accessibility testing into the end-to-end testing strategy gives QA teams a whole new level of visibility into accessibility issues, making it easier to proactively manage them.
In practice, accessibility testing can be performed manually or using automated testing tools.
Ultimately, the best way to test accessibility is to combine automated and manual testing.
Automating Accessibility Testing | The Importance of No-Code Tools
Many front-end accessibility issues are ultimately linked to back-end development practices.
Disorganized code leads to inaccessible digital experiences, and most websites are simply too complex. It is nearly impossible to detect all potential accessibility issues by manually browsing the entire site.
As a result, automated tools are the first choice for most organizations when analyzing their websites for accessibility issues.
Automated accessibility testing is particularly useful for detecting elements such as:
- Empty links
- Presence of alternative text
- Basic Color Contrast
- Page Title Present
- Language of the document
- Presence of form labels
When is it worthwhile to perform manual accessibility testing?
Two areas where manual accessibility testing is necessary:
1. Screen Reader Compatibility: Screen readers are among the most commonly used assistive technologies for users with visual impairments. They analyze the content of a web page and use the source code to determine what the user needs to know and when.
While an automated analysis can identify missing titles on pages, what it cannot do is determine, based on context, whether a page’s title is appropriate or useful.
Manual testing can determine the readability of your content in assistive technology scenarios that automated programs cannot replicate.
2. Keyboard navigation: A key element in making a website accessible is ensuring that all of its features can be used without a mouse.
A compliant website must not only be compatible with various assistive technologies, but also navigable using only keyboard controls.
Mr Suricate Simplified Accessibility Testing Through No-Code Automation
Early and frequent integration of automated accessibility checks into development ensures that quality and accessibility are proactively managed at all stages of the software development lifecycle.
A no-code test automation platform such as Mr Suricate to integrate accessibility testing into your QA strategy, significantly reducing the time to impact.
FAQ
What is an accessibility test?
This is the process of verifying that a website is accessible to people with disabilities: sufficient contrast, keyboard navigation, alternative text, and proper HTML structure, in accordance with RGAA/WCAG standards.
Why conduct accessibility testing?
To make your website accessible to 100% of your audience (approximately 15% of the population lives with a disability), ensure legal compliance, and improve SEO and code quality.
How do you conduct accessibility tests?
By combining automated checks (contrast, tags, keyboard navigation) with manual checks, which are repeated with every update to ensure long-term accessibility.
Further Reading
To see the solution in action, check out our accessibility tests.
