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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?

#111

Post by throwaway857384 »

tmaxxcar wrote: post #81
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]…

What about JAWS and IE on Windows? Most disability groups distribute and use JAWS not NVDA. (Assuming OP is in the United States)

JAWS costs around $1000, NVDA is free. I'm assuming the person doesn't have the budget to buy JAWS. There is a demo for JAWS, but its 40 minutes, that isn't going to be enough to test a page (especially when you need to restart your computer for another 40 minutes).

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

#112

Post by throwaway857384 »

x0x0 wrote: post #89
throwaway857384 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want the extra work. But I do accessibility as my full-time job.

Do you have a recomended service? Part of our service has us hosting a form for our customers that is exposed to their users, so accessibility is a priority. Thanks for any pointers!

I've worked with people from Level Access[1] and Deque[2], there is also TPG[3]. I'm not sure how much money they cost, but they are the real experts in the industry. Some people on Fivver offer services, but I don't know how qualified they are.

[1] https://www.levelaccess.com/ [2] https://www.deque.com/ [3] https://www.paciellogroup.com/

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

#113

Post by throwaway857384 »

10dpd wrote: post #67
CJefferson wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I sort of agree, from my experience, I know what to expect when I see something, so seeing and hearing helps me quickly spot the issue.

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

#114

Post by throwaway857384 »

tmaxxcar wrote: post #80
IvarTJ wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check the WCAG success criteria that your jurisdiction requires. One less obvious, and commonly required, criteria (WCAG 2.4.1[1]) is that the site has some mechanism by which a screen reader user can jump from the beginning of the document to the main content, without having to browse through the preceding navigational links and similar. [1] https://www.w3.org/TR/UNDERSTANDING-WCAG20/navigation-mechan...

Skip-links should also be accessible for keyboard users.

Good point, I'm not a fan of FaceBook but they do an amazing job of this.

If you tab out of the URL bar of your browser, Facebook has a huge accessibility skip links menu.

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

#115

Post by throwaway857384 »

bramd wrote: post #77
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]…

+1 for this advice. Identifying the issues is just one part of the work, finding a correct and usable solution might be lots of work if you don't have much experience with accessibility. I also do full-time accessibility work. Don't need extra work right now, but feel free to get in touch to discuss work in the (near) future.

Finding a solution is the hard part. I've found, the few times that I've been able to sit with the developer and test their code as they tried to solve an accessibility problem was the best method.

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

#116

Post by x0x0 »

throwaway857384 wrote: post #112
x0x0 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a recomended service? Part of our service has us hosting a form for our customers that is exposed to their users, so accessibility is a priority. Thanks for any pointers!

I've worked with people from Level Access[1] and Deque[2], there is also TPG[3]. I'm not sure how much money they cost, but they are the real experts in the industry. Some people on Fivver offer services, but I don't know how qualified they are. [1] https://www.levelaccess.com/ [2] https://www.deque.com/ [3] https://www.paciellogroup.com/

Thank you.

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

#117

Post by oh_boy »

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...

You're right. Had it wrong in my head.

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

#118

Post by oh_boy »

jscholes wrote: post #14
throwaway857384 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

IE is mostly used here because it works best with the screenreaders, not because it's preinstalled or other common reasons. When I test with IE, and then with Firefox, I notice subtle things with big impact working better in IE e.g. I found that screenreaders are particular better with multilingual content on IE. I can't recall the exact screenreader/browser combo, but on IE, I got proper support for different voices for different languages when an element other than the HTML element had a lang attribute.
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