Accessibility Testing 101: A Beginner's Guide

What is Accessibility Testing?

Accessibility (often abbreviated as a11y) testing is the practice of making your web and mobile applications usable by as many people as possible. It focuses on ensuring that people with disabilities, such as visual impairments, hearing loss, motor difficulties, and cognitive disabilities, can access and interact with your product.

Why is it Important?

1. Ethical Imperative: It's the right thing to do. Digital inclusion ensures that everyone has equal access to information and technology.
2. Expanded Market Reach: Around 15% of the world's population lives with some form of disability. Creating accessible products opens your services to a wider audience.
3. Legal Compliance: Many countries have laws (like the Americans with Disabilities Act in the US) that require digital content to be accessible, and non-compliance can lead to legal action.
4. Improved SEO and UX: Many accessibility best practices, like using semantic HTML and providing alt text for images, also improve your site's search engine ranking and overall user experience for everyone.

How to Get Started

• Automated Tools: Use tools like Lighthouse (in Chrome DevTools), axe, or WAVE to automatically scan your pages for common accessibility issues. These tools are a great starting point but can only catch about 30-40% of issues.
• Keyboard Navigation: Can you navigate and interact with every part of your site using only the keyboard? Try tabbing through your entire site. All interactive elements should be focusable and operable.
• Screen Readers: Test your application with a screen reader like NVDA (Windows), VoiceOver (macOS/iOS), or TalkBack (Android). This is the best way to understand the experience for visually impaired users.
• Semantic HTML: Use HTML elements for their intended purpose. Use <button> for buttons, <nav> for navigation, and proper heading tags (<h1>, <h2>, etc.) to structure your content.