In today’s digital environment, testing techniques are evolving along with technology. Accessibility testing is critical for enhancing usability for individuals with impairments while also increasing the application usage rate. ensuring accessibility for all users hence becoming critical. Testers are now working to ensure that digital platforms are accessible and usable by everyone, including users with disabilities. It can be challenging for users with disabilities if there are no accessibility guidelines in place to provide equal privilege and a smooth user experience for everyone.
As technology advances, organizations must check out the latest innovations, such as AI-powered accessibility testing to make their applications more appealing. This entails using comprehensive testing environments, integration with AI test tools, and next-generation automation capabilities to enable automated accessibility testing. This enables teams to systematically evaluate if the user interface of an application complies with accessibility regulations and guidelines.
In this article, we will explore performing accessibility testing using next-generation automation tools. We will also look at some key considerations while implementing this testing. So, let’s start.
Table of Contents
Understanding Automated Accessibility Testing
Accessibility testing is the process of ensuring the user interface of the application is usable and easily accessible by persons with various forms of impairments such as vision, hearing, etc. Automated accessibility testing makes the application development cycle quicker, allowing testers to achieve quality results faster and with minimal mistakes.
The use of automated accessibility testing serves multiple crucial purposes. The campaign of digital accessibility recently gained importance due to automated accessibility testing as it helps organizations comply with standards like the Web Information Accessibility Guidelines. Organizations successfully detect and fix accessibility problems in multiple digital interfaces including websites and mobile applications when they utilize automated tools.
Automated accessibility testing tools and frameworks detect possible accessibility problems or breaches such as non-semantic HTML usage, incorrect colour contrast, the necessity for additional alternative text for pictures, and more. To evaluate and verify an application’s accessibility, these tools compare the application’s code and user experience to a set of pre-established accessibility standards.
Significance of automated accessibility testing
The only things needed for automated accessibility testing are the tools’ selection, analysis, and configuration. Once configured, these tools can easily navigate through a website or mobile application, completely checking it for any compliance concerns or faults that function as barriers to accessibility.
With automated accessibility testing, all application accessibility test checks can easily be completed, freeing up testers to concentrate on avoiding and fixing the errors they find. Automated accessibility testing can provide several benefits to the organization.
Increased Efficiency
One of the primary benefits of automated accessibility testing is increased efficiency. The testing tools can perform concurrent tests, identifying accessibility faults efficiently and allowing testers to shift their main focus to minimizing those difficulties rather than completing manual testing. This can increase their productivity and help them operate more efficiently.
Early Defect Detection
Automated accessibility testing, when integrated into the production life cycle from the start, can assist organizations in identifying and managing risks or concerns before they become more complex and expensive to repair. This strategy ensures that any accessibility difficulties and faults are identified and addressed early in the development cycle, saving both resources and time. It can aid with the delivery of an application to the market that is accessible to everybody and error-free.
Enhanced Market Reach
Through application accessibility testing individuals with impairments gain new opportunities to broaden software usage thus expanding user base potential. The automated testing process helps testers locate accessibility problems more efficiently so they can create useful and inclusive applications for users with any type of impairment. In turn, organizations may reach a broader audience.
Guarantees Regulatory Compliance
No organization would want to be charged with legal issues or hassles. Accessibility testing using next-gen automated tools allows for accurate and efficient evaluation of applications, parts, and functionality concerning applicable legal and regulatory standards. After addressing these concerns, organizations can not only comply with accessibility standards but also avoid similar complications.
User Satisfaction and Engagement
Accessibility testing is more than simply a testing need. Using next-gen accessibility testing tools, testers can find and fix any accessibility-related problems, increasing user happiness and engagement. Making the application or website accessible indicates that the organization values all of its users, regardless of their skill level. This can improve the reputation and image of the organization.
Best practices for implementing automation accessibility testing
Automated accessibility testing involves utilizing next-gen automation tools to identify typical accessibility issues while establishing apparent standards and practices to maximize coverage. Automated testing can quickly identify errors, but a systematic strategy is essential for generating significant outcomes.
Set accessibility standards
To ensure that the automated tests comply with established rules, provide the accessibility standards that testers aim to fulfil, such as WCAG. Any other industry-specific or regional standards should be incorporated.
Select automated testing tools
Choose reputable tools such as Axe, Lighthouse, or WAVE to scan content for accessibility obstacles and provide immediate feedback on typical concerns. For seamless integration, select tools that are compatible with the development environment. Make sure that crucial criteria like contrast, alternative text, and form labels are covered, and test multiple features on a sample page.
Run initial scans
Perform early automatic scans of the website or application to detect simple mistakes like missing alt text and contrast issues. Prioritise core pages for first scans, such as landing pages, application pages, and forms. Use scan findings to compile a list of accessibility concerns by category, such as visual elements and interactive components.
Configure dynamic content
If the website contains interactive or dynamic features, configure tests to manage them. Ensure that tools are configured to check pop-ups, modals, and other interactive components where accessibility concerns are frequently neglected. Check the parameters to allow the scanning of dynamic elements. Testers must execute test scenarios to ensure that interactive elements such as pop-up notifications and popup dialogues are covered.
Review and prioritize findings
Analyze the results to determine the most pressing concerns first. Prioritise improvements that affect usability and accessibility, such as critical navigation components and key content. Make a list of prioritized issues that must be fixed promptly, such as navigation and critical form fields. Document findings and assign tasks to ensure quick resolution.
Schedule regular tests
Set up automated tests to run regularly or include them in the continuous integration (CI) pipeline to detect accessibility issues as they emerge during development. Schedule tests for critical development cycles like feature launches or upgrades. Enable notifications to notify the team of new accessibility concerns detected during routine scans.
Ensure cross-browser and cross-device compatibility
Ensure accessibility across different browsers and devices. Automated tools can test on multiple browsers and screen sizes to ensure consistency. This is particularly useful for ensuring that accessibility features, such as keyboard navigation and voice commands, work across different web environments and devices.
Next-generation automation tools for accessibility testing
LambdaTest
LambdaTest is an AI-Native test orchestration and execution platform that can conduct manual and automated tests at scale. The platform enables real-time and automated testing across more than 5000 environments and real mobile devices. It is a robust automated testing platform that provides various AI-driven accessibility tools to detect and resolve accessibility issues in web applications with great precision by simulating how users with disabilities interact with content.
LambdaTest’s AI QA testing keeps adding innovative AI-powered capabilities that enable QA teams to test with unparalleled accuracy and efficiency.
Key features-
- Comprehensive Web Accessibility Compliance- Scan the website to create a baseline for WCAG compliance, and then schedule ongoing scans to monitor and maintain accessibility standards over time.
- High Reliability– As a cloud-based platform, it offers excellent reliability and availability, providing teams with reliable and consistent test environments.
- Parallel Test Execution– Allows several tests to run concurrently across various environments, which significantly reduces test execution time.
- AI-Powered Test Generation– Utilises AI and machine learning algorithms to generate test cases based on code patterns and previous test results.
- Smooth Integration with the Workflow of Developers- Utilise tools such as GitHub Actions to effortlessly integrate with CI/CD processes, and provide real-time feedback and automatic reports.
Lighthouse
The open-source Lighthouse platform exists as an automatic solution developed by Google that integrates into Chrome’s DevTools. The primary function of Lighthouse enable quality improvements of web pages by evaluating their performance alongside SEO, Progressive Web Apps (PWAs), and accessibility metrics. Lighthouse has become a leading accessibility automation solution that concentrates on providing developers with useful evaluation reports.
Key features-
- WCAG Compliance assessment– Conducts a comprehensive accessibility assessment using WCAG standards, addressing everything from ARIA attributes to colour contrast difficulties.
- Real-time Audits– Perform audits directly in Chrome’s DevTools or from the command line.
- Integration– Combines with other development tools such as Jenkins and GitHub Actions to automate CI/CD tests.
- Performance Metrics– In addition to accessibility, it gives data on website speed, SEO, and performance.
Accessibility Insights
Microsoft provides Accessibility Insights as an open-source tool to help developers find and solve accessibility problems. Accessibility Insights provides developers with automated testing tools as well as manual testing capabilities which help ensure WCAG standard compliance in websites and applications.
Key features-
- FastPass– Performs an immediate automatic scan that finds typical accessibility concerns in a few seconds.
- Assessment– A systematic methodology to perform manual testing on all WCAG compliance concerns.
- Integration and API– Accessibility Insights is quite flexible since it offers an API for customized integrations with different development environments.
- Visualisations– Provides colour-coded visual indicators to assist developers in locating accessibility problems immediately on a website or application.
A11y Machine
A11y Machine is an open-source accessibility testing tool that runs from the command line. It evaluates whole web pages for accessibility concerns and gives detailed results. It can be easily incorporated into continuous integration (CI) systems to automate the testing procedure.
Key features-
- Real-time Feedback– Continuously checks web pages for accessibility concerns and provides real-time feedback to developers.
- Customizable Testing Parameters– Developers can create test configurations that follow certain accessibility criteria.
- Extensive Reports– Creates extensive reports that explain each infraction and make recommendations for correction.
- CI/CD Integration– Designed for developers who seek to automate accessibility testing using CI systems such as Jenkins or TravisCI.
ARC Toolkit
ARC Toolkit is a robust browser-based accessibility testing tool created by TPGi (The Paciello Group). It is accessible as a Chrome extension and is commonly used for both manual and automatic accessibility testing. ARC Toolkit offers extensive insights on accessibility breaches and is ideal for developers and testers.
Key features-
- Browser Extension– Enables simple, instantly accessible assessments within Chrome.
- WCAG Audits– Tests web pages against WCAG standards and generates comprehensive error reports.
- Visual Interface– Provides a user-friendly interface that indicates accessibility concerns directly from the website.
- Integration with CI/CD– Integrates with CI/CD pipelines, allowing teams to keep accessibility in agile environments.
Conclusion
In Conclusion, the use of automated accessibility testing leads development teams to identify accessibility issues beforehand which allows them to enhance testing speed and efficiency. Early identification plays an essential role because problems that arise early are less expensive to resolve in the first development cycle. The next-generation automated monitoring solutions enable fair access by maintaining scalability along with consistency while delivering impartiality to improve usability and regulatory compliance.
These tools are committed to guaranteeing accessibility for all individuals with disabilities through powerful features like AI-driven automation, CI/CD integration, real-world device testing, continuous monitoring and integration, and thorough reporting and analytics.
