Blog Insights
508, ADA, WCAG, Oh My! How to Test for Accessibility Standards
This post is adapted from a presentation at Drupal GovCon in August 2024. As Forum One’s Accessibility Lead, Jeanette Stair ensures that our public sector and nonprofit clients receive unwavering support in prioritizing accessibility for all users.
All our mission-driven partners want an accessible website that helps users easily find information and perform important tasks. The website also needs to comply with laws and regulations. Automated accessibility checkers can be extremely helpful, but only cover about 30% of potential issues.
What about the other 70%?
How to test for accessibility standards that automated tools can’t cover
For a website, automated checkers are great at testing parts of success criteria, flagging potential issues for manual review, assisting with manual reviews, and checking for compliance with WCAG standards. But humans are still needed for judgment. Truly ensuring accessibility requires evaluating whether an experience is “equivalent” to the common use, judging if captions, alt text, and other supportive material are accurate, and determining intent. Unfortunately there’s no such thing as a fully automated accessibility check system.
A detailed process for accessibility checking isn’t possible to cover in one blog post. But here we’ve outlined 12 major areas and processes for accessibility review, with tips along the way for what you’ll need to test manually, and what free tools can be used to help. Reference the presentation slides for a detailed list of methods to use to test for specific WCAG success criteria.
1. Automated Checks
Run an automated checker first, before manual testing. Consider if you want to fix issues caught in this step before manual testing, and if you do, run the automated checker again before manual testing.
Free tools:
* Siteimprove and Axe DevTools have free browser extensions in addition to their paid products.
2. Content Review
In a content review, check that everything that should be a heading is tagged as one, and that nothing is tagged as a heading that doesn’t function as one (don’t use headings as a way to apply styles). Ensure your content structure is clear and headings describe the topic. Avoid images of text, and make sure the language of the page is set accurately.
Free Tools:
3. Keyboard and Screen Reader
Perform manual testing while using a keyboard and screen reader. Skim content and tab through the page to ensure content is announced in a meaningful order and focus indicators are functional and logical.
Free Tools:
- NVDA (free downloadable screen reader for Windows)
- Voiceover (screen reader included in Mac OS)
- W3C Easy Checks bookmarklets:
4. Mouse / Pointer
Use a mouse to test mouse and pointer-specific success criteria. Ensure that hover content is dismissible, hoverable, and persistent, and that all functionality can be operated using a single pointer without dragging.
Free tools: None of note.
5. Auto-play
If the page has content that automatically plays or moves, check to ensure users can pause, stop, or control volume separately from system volume, that there’s no flashing, and that any moving, blinking, scrolling, or auto-updating action can be paused, stopped, or hidden.
Free tools: None of note.
6. Multimedia
If the page contains embedded multimedia, check to ensure that captions and audio descriptions are provided, and that transcripts or other equivalent content is provided.
Free tools: None of note.
7. User Input / Forms
If the page contains fields the user can change, check to confirm that labels and instructions are accurate and errors are clearly explained and fixable. Automated tests will typically flag if labels are missing or not associated with an input field.
Free tools:
8. Contrast
Automatic checkers will flag some contrast issues, but not all, and will give some false flags. Use a tool with an “eyedropper” function to test contrast with text against an image background
Free tools:
9. Screen Settings
Screen settings cover a user’s ability to enlarge text or spacing, or change the page orientation. Some of these settings can be disruptive, so it’s helpful to group them together in testing.
Free tools:
- Accessibility Insights for Web for text spacing
10. Across Multiple Pages
Ensure users can navigate content easily, find important information like contact and help, and move from page to page in multiple ways such as through search, interlinking, table of contents.
Free tools: None of note.
11. Other
While even the above list is not exhaustive, there are other components to consider. Test for common issues around relying solely on color or sensory characteristics, tables, target size, and authentication. Make sure that no uncommon scenarios apply, such as custom keyboard shortcuts, timing, or motion actuation.
- ANDI for reviewing tables
- Record and Report
You might use a Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) to create an Accessibility Conformance Report (ACR). A less-formal report would include a summary, recommendations for priorities, methodology, areas of success, and outstanding issues.
There’s a lot to do!
Don’t let the complexity of accessibility standards deter you. Whether you’re looking to assess your progress or create a sustainable self-evaluation process, we’re here to help. Get in touch below!
