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Ask HN: Best way to test accessibility of a website?

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Re: Ask HN: Best way to test accessibility of a website?

#11

Post by dbjorge »

Microsoft recently open sourced[1] one of the main tools they use for web accessibility testing.

Accessibility Insights for Web (https://accessibilityinsights.io) is a Chrome extension that guides you through doing an accessibility assessment of a website. It includes a combination of automated checks (using aXe[2]) and assisted/guided manual checks. Its rules are based on the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines[3]; passing a full assessment in the tool amounts to meeting all the "A" and "AA" WCAG 2.0 requirements.

Like other commenters have mentioned, automated checks (like aXe) are a great start, but aren't really sufficient on their own. Accessibility Insights will lead you through how to test different aspects of screen reader usage (and other types of accessibility issues, too!). It will also help you track issues as you go, and produce a pretty report at the end that you can attach to a bug.

As with most types of UI testing, no matter what tools you're using, there's really no substitute for watching a real user try to use your product.

Disclaimer: I am an engineer that works for Microsoft on the Accessibilty Insights team.

[1] https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/opensource/2019/03/12/micro... [2] https://www.deque.com/axe/ [3] https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/quickref/

Re: Ask HN: Best way to test accessibility of a website?

#12

Post by jscholes »

There is a great Chrome extension called aXe[1], as well as tools like Tenon[2] which also has a rest API so you can potentially set it up as part of a CI workflow.

It's worth remembering that "accessibility" is a broad term. If you want a tool which can identify some common antipatterns and the WCAG guideline(s) they violate, the tools I've mentioned are a good place to start. But if you want to create a truly accessible website which is also usable by people with special needs, you'll need experts to come in to carry out audits and specialised user testing.

Please feel free to drop me an email using the address in my HN profile. I'm a usability and accessibility professional, and disabled to boot. Happy to answer any questions you might have and connect you with other great resources, tools and people.

[1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/axe/lhdoppojpmngad...

[2] https://tenon.io/

Re: Ask HN: Best way to test accessibility of a website?

#14

Post by jscholes »

throwaway857384 wrote: post #10
oh_boy wrote: post #9

Use aXe for automated tests and test everything manually with JAWS + Firefox (most popular screen reader Desktop combination) and iOS VoiceOver (most troubling mobile issues in my experience). If you can afford in your project, use a external service that tests with people with different disabilities.

JAWS + IE is the most popular combination [1] [1] https://webaim.org/projects/screenreadersurvey7/#browsercomb...

> JAWS + IE is the most popular combination

It's worth keeping a few points in mind when reading these results:

1. The survey was carried out in October 2017. Things can and do move quite rapidly in this area, especially given the increased number of users who will be running Windows 10 now who may not have been back then.

2. IE won't be around forever, and once the accessibility of Microsoft Edge improves (which is likely to happen pretty soon when they adopt Chromium), IE will become less and less relevant.

3. NVDA with Firefox is a much more common combination than JAWS with Firefox, primarily because the NVDA developers recommend it. Freedom Scientific (makers of JAWS) have historically pushed IE perhaps more than other browsers, so it will be interesting to see how that changes as Edge becomes more usable.

Re: Ask HN: Best way to test accessibility of a website?

#15

Post by jscholes »

As an additional comment for people coming across this thread in future and anyone else it may help. Please make sure that your accessibility tools are high quality, as you would when assessing any other dependency or service used in the development of your product. In particular, they should always assess the rendered DOM of any page, rather than a string of HTML. And if they make bold claims about the increased accessibility of your website once their recommendations are followed, or try to sell you some ridiculously cheap consultancy services, stay away. Whether you buy their consulting services or not, if they're too cheap, their tools probably are too. And if they tell you that automated testing is a route to complete usability for people with special needs, they're deluded.

Re: Ask HN: Best way to test accessibility of a website?

#16

Post by jedberg »

Hire an engineer who needs accommodation. I mean that in jest of course, but only sort of. For a while I had an engineer on my team who was dyslexic and while not color blind themselves, were very in tune with the color blind community. They made huge improvements on not only our front end UX, but also on our codebase.

For example, apparently camelCase is really bad for dyslexics, and interstitial underscores are always_preferred.

Re: Ask HN: Best way to test accessibility of a website?

#18

Post by cwbrandsma »

jedberg wrote: post #16

Hire an engineer who needs accommodation. I mean that in jest of course, but only sort of. For a while I had an engineer on my team who was dyslexic and while not color blind themselves, were very in tune with the color blind community. They made huge improvements on not only our front end UX, but also on our codebase. For example, apparently camelCase is really bad for dyslexics, and interstitial underscores are alw…

There are multiple forms of dyslexia. For instance, I have one form and I have a daughter with a completely different variety. I have no problems with camelCase, but I am very particular about my fonts (Consolas for life).

I don’t like _ because of the keyboard placement. I don’t trust my pinkies at those angles.

Re: Ask HN: Best way to test accessibility of a website?

#19

Post by jedberg »

cwbrandsma wrote: post #18
jedberg wrote: post #16

Hire an engineer who needs accommodation. I mean that in jest of course, but only sort of. For a while I had an engineer on my team who was dyslexic and while not color blind themselves, were very in tune with the color blind community. They made huge improvements on not only our front end UX, but also on our codebase. For example, apparently camelCase is really bad for dyslexics, and interstitial underscores are alw…

There are multiple forms of dyslexia. For instance, I have one form and I have a daughter with a completely different variety. I have no problems with camelCase, but I am very particular about my fonts (Consolas for life). I don’t like _ because of the keyboard placement. I don’t trust my pinkies at those angles.

My understanding from my coworker was that while some forms of dyslexics can process camelCase no problem, the underscore will never be worse than camelCase and will sometimes be better, so it's better to just use underscore. I'm certainly no expert though.
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