Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 118 posts

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

#61

Post by pure-awesome »

warent wrote: post #26
dingus wrote: post #24

- Use blind accessibility tools with your website. If you're on iOS/macOS enable VoiceOver, figure out how it works, close your eyes and use your website. - Disable JavaScript and use your website. This may not be relevant for web apps, but regular websites should work normally. - Try to use your website with only the keyboard. - Try to use your website with extreme zoom levels and font size overrides. - Monitor your…

> "Use blind accessibility tools with your website. If you're on iOS/macOS enable VoiceOver, figure out how it works, close your eyes and use your website." I doubt this is going to be very effective. Sure, it's better than nothing at all, but this is akin to sighted person with zero blindness experience testing the effectiveness of a newly designed white cane, only a website is much more complicated. You should alwa…

The metaphor is slightly off-the-mark. Testing a fancy new white cane would be like testing the accessibility tool itself. If you are developing that, then you definitely need an expert in such tools (probably a blind person).

However, developing the site is more akin to developing... a hallway? You can test whether blind people can navigate your hallway by closing your eyes and walking down it whilst using a cane. This is a bit easier- you just need to make sure there aren't obvious pitfalls and dangerous obstacles, maybe that there's braille on the doors etc.

Having an actual blind person helping you out in the second case is obviously preferable, but if you cannot, I think most blind people would appreciate you putting in the effort and at least trying to make it accessible, as opposed to the alternative of not caring at all. A lot of accessibility is standardized and there are guides to follow. It can sometimes be tricky, to be sure, but it's doable.

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

#62

Post by shawnz »

austincheney wrote: post #55
interfixus wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, exactly. And many such impairments will not prevent you benefitting from layout, colors, typography, images, and sundry other kinds of graphical trickery.

Sounds like you are confusing non-blindness for normal functionality. Fortunately, Wikipedia has a page for this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_impairment The idea of accessibility is that a product/service is available to a wide audience regardless of their physical/cognitive impairment. It is still discriminatory if some user might be capable of enjoying visual eye candy if they must struggle to do so due to…

I don't think you are understanding the parent correctly. They are saying a person with a partial visual impairment can still benefit from a well-designed visual page layout, because a person with partial visual impairment might still use vision in some ways. So well-designed CSS and images DO benefit those individuals. You seem to be implying that anyone with a visual impairment, even a partial one, would prefer to browse with CSS and images off. But that's not necessarily the case.

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

#64

Post by bookofjoe »

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.

Too bad copyreaders are a dying profession 'cause you'd be a natural.

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

#65

Post by beaconstudios »

dingus wrote: post #24

- Use blind accessibility tools with your website. If you're on iOS/macOS enable VoiceOver, figure out how it works, close your eyes and use your website. - Disable JavaScript and use your website. This may not be relevant for web apps, but regular websites should work normally. - Try to use your website with only the keyboard. - Try to use your website with extreme zoom levels and font size overrides. - Monitor your…

> - Disable JavaScript and use your website. This may not be relevant for web apps, but regular websites should work normally.

I'm not sure how this is related to accessibility? Are there tools for visually impaired people that don't work well with JS?

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

#66

Post by beaconstudios »

quicklime wrote: post #31
dingus wrote: post #24

- Use blind accessibility tools with your website. If you're on iOS/macOS enable VoiceOver, figure out how it works, close your eyes and use your website. - Disable JavaScript and use your website. This may not be relevant for web apps, but regular websites should work normally. - Try to use your website with only the keyboard. - Try to use your website with extreme zoom levels and font size overrides. - Monitor your…

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…

> However one thing he also says is: don't assume that low-vision is the only type of disability. You also need to build software for people who are: deaf, have slow motor skills (e.g. avoid putting strict time limits on user actions, or making things jump around on the screen too much while people are trying to hit a target), lack fine motor skills (e.g. don't make a target too small), etc.

These are also good UX guidelines in general.

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

#67

Post by 10dpd »

CJefferson wrote: post #56
throwaway857384 wrote: post #8

Pay me to do it... But in all seriousness, I use aXe-Coconut[1], headingsMaper[2]. Then tab through the page and make sure you can get from top left to bottom right. The cursor[focus state /ouline] should be visible the whole time and you should never lose your place. When you are done that, if you have a Mac turn on voiceover with Command+F5 and use Safari or Chrome (more aria-support). On Windows, download NVDA[3]…

I would add, to really test, after turning on voice over, turn off your monitor. This will let you test if you can explore your website with the visual structure.

Don't do this - the best way to evaluate is to compare the visual output with the auditory output, something you can't do if the screen is turned off.

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

#68

Post by austincheney »

y4mi wrote: post #58
austincheney wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In modern browsers all modern HTML5 is valid XHTML so long as it conforms to the syntax and tag structure. In fact the only real difference, aside from closing tags like br and img , is that with XHTML the browser yells at you when you get HTML wrong. On my personal sites I send all my HTML with a .xhtml file extension to force XML compliance, but the code is modern HTML5.

that is wrong. this is valid html5 for example: content content2 quick google got me this blog post: https://blog.teamtreehouse.com/to-close-or-not-to-close-tags...

I am aware.

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

#69

Post by austincheney »

shawnz wrote: post #62
austincheney wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like you are confusing non-blindness for normal functionality. Fortunately, Wikipedia has a page for this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_impairment The idea of accessibility is that a product/service is available to a wide audience regardless of their physical/cognitive impairment. It is still discriminatory if some user might be capable of enjoying visual eye candy if they must struggle to do so due to…

I don't think you are understanding the parent correctly. They are saying a person with a partial visual impairment can still benefit from a well-designed visual page layout, because a person with partial visual impairment might still use vision in some ways. So well-designed CSS and images DO benefit those individuals. You seem to be implying that anyone with a visual impairment, even a partial one, would prefer to…

What does that have to do with accessibility?

> You seem to be implying that anyone with a visual impairment, even a partial one

I am not. Well written CSS, a subset of usability, is irrelevant to accessibility.

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

#70

Post by jimktrains2 »

beaconstudios wrote: post #65
dingus wrote: post #24

- Use blind accessibility tools with your website. If you're on iOS/macOS enable VoiceOver, figure out how it works, close your eyes and use your website. - Disable JavaScript and use your website. This may not be relevant for web apps, but regular websites should work normally. - Try to use your website with only the keyboard. - Try to use your website with extreme zoom levels and font size overrides. - Monitor your…

> - Disable JavaScript and use your website. This may not be relevant for web apps, but regular websites should work normally. I'm not sure how this is related to accessibility? Are there tools for visually impaired people that don't work well with JS?

Traditionally screen readers didn't. I'm not sure if that's still the case.

However, with no JavaScript (and modern css) you can't change the randomly after load to indicate state, which may be difficult for a screen readers to get that back to a blind person.

Post reply on HN