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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?

#101

Post by shawnz »

austincheney wrote: post #100
shawnz wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bad usability precludes good accessibility. You seem to be implying that accessibility is just about being able to access the content. That's wrong, accessibility is about ease of access to the content. If what you were saying were true, then semantically correct HTML wouldn't be a WCAG requirement. But semantically correct HTML improves usability for people using assistive technologies, thus it is an important part…

> That's wrong, accessibility is about ease of access to the content. That doesn't account for cognitive disabilities. Ease of access is up to the user-agent software. Accessibility is more than just that. As front end developers we have to provide that content in a meaningful and understandable form without getting in the browser's or screen reader's way. Sometimes that isn't enough and you need to use ARIA to clari…

> Screen readers provide a variety of navigational tools for drilling into page content. They don't just read text.

And CSS is also used to provide navigational tools for drilling into page content. For example, putting navigation panels on a sidebar rather than in between the header and the content. That's not just done for aesthetics, it's done to make the information on the page easier to understand. But if your brilliantly-designed page layout breaks when zoomed in, then that is a barrier which disabled people will face that abled people will not. By doing accessibility testing with CSS disabled you will not be able to test the accessibility of such navigational features.

Sure, they could use a screen reader instead, but maybe they don't want to use a screen reader. Maybe page zoom is enough for them normally and that's what they prefer. By not taking accessibility into consideration when creating the visual design of the page, you are basically saying that the visual design of your page is crafted just for the needs of abled people, and disabled people should have to use special tools to access your content. That's inaccessible.

> I am not really sure what you are arguing. You can have great CSS and great accessibility at the same time.

You have my point backwards. I am arguing that you can't have great accessibility with bad CSS. Thus you need to do your accessibility testing with CSS enabled (just like how your clients who have disabilities will be using it).

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

#102

Post by dta5003 »

https://www.compliancesheriff.com/

Compliance Sheriff helps identify compliance issues with WCAG and Section 508 standards, and their scan will give output with visual indicators of the non-compliant areas. Haven't seen that in any other tool.

They have a free test for up to 10 publicly facing URLs too.

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

#104

Post by ficklepickle »

majewsky wrote: post #48
bookofjoe wrote: post #44

Ask me to look at it: 39 days ago, on this very site, I learned that I am what is called by cognoscenti a "breaker": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19153810

I have this, but with typos. Give me a page full of text with a single typo, and somehow, against all odds, I'll immediately spot it.

Me too! I just got an email from Cory Doctorow re: a typo I found in his article. It"s my only super power

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

#105

Post by qwerty456127 »

jitl wrote: post #36
skibz wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Changing the media type of the HTML does require a bit more strict syntax, but it also is a cheap trick to ensure the HTML tags and structure are arranged in a valid way.

This seems a bit bananas to me because there’s plenty of valid HTML5 is NOT valid XHTML or XML. For example, HTML5 allows common tags such as and to be unclosed, which is not valid in XHTML. HTML5 written in this style is not “wrong” - it’s valid, and correctly presented by tools like VoiceOver. Screen readers will be a-okay with HTML5; this advice is going to send people down wild goose chases with no need. XHTML is…

> HTML5 allows common tags such as

and to be unclosed

Yet many people (me included) consider this inappropriate and never use this allowance.

In some cases (when you hand-type/edit huge HTML documents) it is a handy feature but there probably are many scripts that can close the tags for you once you're done.

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

#106

Post by austincheney »

shawnz wrote: post #101
austincheney wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's wrong, accessibility is about ease of access to the content. That doesn't account for cognitive disabilities. Ease of access is up to the user-agent software. Accessibility is more than just that. As front end developers we have to provide that content in a meaningful and understandable form without getting in the browser's or screen reader's way. Sometimes that isn't enough and you need to use ARIA to clari…

> Screen readers provide a variety of navigational tools for drilling into page content. They don't just read text. And CSS is also used to provide navigational tools for drilling into page content. For example, putting navigation panels on a sidebar rather than in between the header and the content. That's not just done for aesthetics, it's done to make the information on the page easier to understand. But if your b…

You are deliberately confusing presentation for semantics, which is discriminatory. The WCAG directly mentions not doing this. You cannot achieve AA conformance when you attempt to force this on your users.

For example red means stop and green means go to many people. When color is the primary means of status description that is discriminatory, because blind people cannot perceive color in any way. The status must be described in some other way equally for all users, but it can be colored red/green by CSS for increased usability. The same goes for page structures like menu bars. The standards even provide examples with ARIA.

CSS is only a factor for people with motor control limitations when interactive controls are too close together to be accessed uniquely with a mouse click. If this is a concern for you have somebody with advanced Parkinson’s usability test your site, otherwise turn CSS off for all other accessibility testing.

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

#107

Post by shawnz »

austincheney wrote: post #106
shawnz wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Screen readers provide a variety of navigational tools for drilling into page content. They don't just read text. And CSS is also used to provide navigational tools for drilling into page content. For example, putting navigation panels on a sidebar rather than in between the header and the content. That's not just done for aesthetics, it's done to make the information on the page easier to understand. But if your b…

You are deliberately confusing presentation for semantics, which is discriminatory. The WCAG directly mentions not doing this. You cannot achieve AA conformance when you attempt to force this on your users. For example red means stop and green means go to many people. When color is the primary means of status description that is discriminatory, because blind people cannot perceive color in any way. The status must be…

> When color is the primary means of status description that is discriminatory, because blind people cannot perceive color in any way. The status must be described in some other way equally for all users

Yes, agreed. That's why you should provide a non-colour-based indicator of the status, AND ALSO make sure the colours work for partially vision impaired people (or colourblind, etc).

If the information is technically accessible, but in an awkward and hard-to-use format compared to the sighted version of that information, then it's not really accessible. Making colourblind people read awkward labels when you could just as easily use colourblind-compatible colours is inaccessible. I am not confusing presentation and semantics, I am just saying that both are involved in creating accessible content.

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

#108

Post by lioeters »

philo23 wrote: post #60
lioeters wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just checked in Firefox dev tools: there's a top-level menu for Accessibility, but the panel displays a grayed-out message, "Turn On Accessibility Features" which can't be clicked. Thanks for pointing out this (future) feature, it sounds very useful. I'll keep an eye out for when it's available.

Just had a quick read, looks like it's available since Firefox v63, https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Tools/Accessibility... It should work though once you click on that button, weird that it doesn't seem to be working for you. Edit: Just read through more of that link, it's got quite a good breakdown of the features on it.

Thank you for the link, I bookmarked it to read more in detail. You're right, that's a nice overview of the features. I've always felt the need to learn more about accessibility (and regularly apply it to what I build). This looks great for the purpose.

I found in the browser preferences that I'd checked "Prevent accessibility services from accessing your browser". I had to uncheck it to be able to enable the Accessibility Inspector. Will be exploring it more.

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

#109

Post by lioeters »

unit22 wrote: post #88
lioeters wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just checked in Firefox dev tools: there's a top-level menu for Accessibility, but the panel displays a grayed-out message, "Turn On Accessibility Features" which can't be clicked. Thanks for pointing out this (future) feature, it sounds very useful. I'll keep an eye out for when it's available.

You probably disabled a11y services in about:preferences#privacy

I appreciate the pointer! Yup, indeed, I'd checked "Prevent accessibility services from accessing your browser". I had to uncheck it to be able to enable the Accessibility Inspector.

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

#110

Post by FearNotDaniel »

dingus wrote: post #93
quicklime wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm lucky enough to have a low-vision person who works as a tester on my team, and does our accessibility testing. It's very impressive watching/listening to him use a screen reader - I was really amazed at how fast he has it set to read the screen. He does suggest all the things you've mentioned above, and it's good advice. However one thing he also says is: don't assume that low-vision is the only type of disabilit…

I had the same reaction when watching blind YouTubers show how they use VoiceOver. It was so fast I couldn't understand or follow along. A good takeaway was feeling their frustration with improperly labeled items. You want to order keywords first, for instance "March 25, created on" instead of "Created on March 25", because they have to wait through "Created on:" dozens of times, when they already know the label cont…

Interesting that the en-GB pattern of naming dates ("25 March", not "March 25") would make it that much more efficient, but I imagine that's culturally unacceptable to the average US citizen?
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