Accessibility testing in UX. Accessibility is all about making…
By: Saeid Azizi
Tags: UX Design, Accessibility Testing, Accessibility, Product Design

Accessibility Testing

in short, Accessibility Testing is the subset of Usability Testing, that is conducted to check whether the system is accessible by people with physical disabilities.

Best Web Accessibility Testing tools

here are 10 useful tools that will help you to identify some of the accessibility issues of your web application.

1.WAVE: is a tool developed by WebAIM for evaluating the accessibility of web contents it is available online as well as a toolbar for Firefox browser

2. Dynomapper: is a Visual Sitemap Generator of 4 types Default, Circle, Tree, and Folder It evaluates HTML contents of the website and can create a sitemap from any URL

3. Accessibility Developer Tools: Chrome plugin offered by Google with various accessibility verification functions on websites.

4. LowVision: Focused on vision problems, the tool allows you to test your site for users with common vision problems (cataracts, glaucomas, color blindness, and so on).

5. AChecker: is an open-source web accessibility evaluation tool designed by Inclusive Design Research Center which was initially known as Adaptive Technology Resource Center. You can evaluate accessibility by simply entering a URL or by uploading an HTML file

6. TWA: Identifies possible accessibility issues by showing your locations directly on the analyzed page

7. Colour Contrast Analyser: is designed by Paciellogroup for Windows Mac OS and OS X.It is used to determine text legibility and color contrast for graphical and visual elements in the web page. The Visual Simulation functionality is supported only for Windows.

8. readability test: readability Is the key to accessibility. It is hard to test, however. This online tool evaluates text based on different reading scales and also recommends which complex sentences to take another look at. It should be noted that these tools do not address all accessibility issues, such as the clarity of a text, the applicability of a textual equivalent, and so on.

9.Tenon: Tenon evaluates web accessibility for WCAG 2.0 and VPAT (Section 508) compliance, it uses some APIs that can be easily integrated with the tool we are using for Unit Testing, Acceptance Testing, System Testing, and Issue Tracking.

10. Contrast checker: Calculate the contrast ratio of foreground and background colors and check for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).

What about accessibility in apps?

I mentioned mostly web accessibility, but apps can and should be accessible to any user. In general, Product and UX designers should try to feed accessibility into design systems as much as possible. A first step is to check the accessibility guidelines for the operating system for which you are designing: iOS or Android

.It is highly advised to check out the W3C Mobile Standards :

On the W3C website, you can also find a step-by-step on how to apply Accessibility to Mobile.

it is necessary to consider people with any kind of disability as part of your target groups when we are designing an app or website. as a UX designer, you should understand how to evaluate and analyze apps and websites to find if they follow the W3C standards for accessibility and how to fix UX issues related to it.