A PAGE TALKS ABOUT (The Glimpse, Accessibility @evaluation)
Tags: webdev, automation, selenium, testing
Published: 2024-05-16 05:35:05

_**MY WORKOUTS: WRITING**_


![MY WORKOUTS:WRITING](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/e9mu0wkh9ro36ioqogxe.png)


![CHANNEL OBJECTIVES](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/atvey3f2a31ns01611vf.png)


![GAAD](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/eyy5a9ww14esla70jtv4.png)

May 16, 2024, marks Global Accessibility Awareness Day! This event is organized by the GAAD Foundation. The @reWireByAutomation channel acknowledges the significance of Digital accessibility and is therefore presenting this short introductory article and subsequently mentioned components stories that will be followed.

Accessibility has been recognized for decades, holding a significant presence in the Digital realm to ensure applications adhere to WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines), catering not only to non-disabled users but also to those with disabilities. It’s a critical component primarily overseen by the **_Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) from W3.org,_** aimed at empowering applications to be universally accessible to disabled individuals globally, thereby enhancing their digital experiences to align with those of non-disabled people.

The **_@reWireByAutomation channel_** acknowledges the importance of accessibility, ongoing developments, and anticipates its future advancements. It is planned to articulate brief, impactful stories on the portrayed components and illustrated in the below image.


![A11Y EVALUATION](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/uzlvsr6mgz5oeiro8urr.png)

**WCAG GUIDELINES (V2.2):** Guidelines are an evolution of the **_Web Content Accessibility Guidelines from 2.0 to 2.2,_** with preparations for the next version in the future. It holds significant value in the accessibility world, ensuring applications adhere to standards to achieve accessibility-friendly applications for disabled individuals, covering all categories such as hearing, speech, vision, cognitive, and physical disabilities. The upcoming article outlines the structure of the WCAG Guidelines and provides basic awareness, which is further useful when utilizing methods and tools for analysis.

**APPROACH & METHODS:** This component plays a key role in the fulfillment of application accessibility analysis, covering four accessibility principles (Referred from www.w3.org/WAI): **_Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and Robust._** Evaluation methods can be static and may leverage tools approved by organizations to analyze HTML, CSS, and Media controls. It incorporates methods to utilize approved Screen Reader tools to assess whether interactive elements are accessible and readable. The upcoming article outlines its importance, methods of conducting it, and integration into the application testing life cycle.

**EVALUATION TOOLS:** Numerous free tools are available in the market, integrated into browser extensions, to conduct DOM analysis of web elements and generate results based on guidelines conformance. The DOM tools such as WAVE and ARC Toolkit etc primarily focused on, the execution, analysis, and interpretation of results. Screen Readers like NVDA (Open Source) primarily focused on interactive HTML elements for keyboard navigation and reading. An article will be published to cover accessibility features like DOM analysis, color contrast, and navigations by Evaluation and Screen Reader tools respectively.

**INTEGRATE AUTOMATION:** While browser-based extension tools offer seamless features, integrating automation could enhance application coverage. Automated test suites for accessibility testing can be leveraged on demand, and their advantages are valuable depending on the requirement. This component, marked as “Commercial”, includes well-known tools like axe (deque), which come with libraries to support open-source frameworks like Selenium, Cucumber, and languages such as Java and Python.

**MOBILE CLOUD SOLUTIONS:** This space is evolving, with solutions provided by Mobile Cloud Vendors to ensure that apps are digitally accessible to all users. This falls under the “Commercial” category. Prominent vendors ex: such as Perfecto, LambdaTest, BrowserStack etc. offer solutions to meet the accessibility needs of apps.

It’s a continuous journey, **_@reWireByAutomation channel _**will continue to publish more insightful stories on each component illustrated in the above image that are relevant to the field and support Digital accessibility enablers.

With this, @reWireByAutomation is signing off!