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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?

#81

Post by tmaxxcar »

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)

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

#82

Post by KineticLensman »

Also, please don't forget people with hearing impairment. You don't need a special tool, just remember to include text captions or similar if your page includes spoken content.

I'm partially deaf so sensitive to this issue. With hearing aids my hearing is 'fine'. But I recently completed some online training (that had spoken information) with the sound turned completely down to see how bad it would be for a profoundly deaf person. There were two questions where a correct answer required having heard a spoken (but not captioned!) statement.

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

#83

Post by throwaway5752 »

Pay Knowbility or another specialist (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19475842) - no affiliation with either - to do it for you.

It's a much deeper domain than you think it is and people have real expertise worth paying for, particularly if you need section 508 compliance for a contract and money is on the line.

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

#86

Post by acdha »

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?

It's less critical now that browsers have standardized on the ARIA interface so it's more likely that JS sites will work, as long as you use ARIA correctly, but also note that many users are on older combinations — e.g. JAWS on IE11 is still fairly common — and you have no easy way to measure screen-reader activity so it's hard to tell whether, say, the 5% of your old IE traffic is a high percentage of your screen reader users.

The other challenge is that many JavaScript-heavy sites have horrible fallback mechanisms and you would want to test to make sure that at least someone with a screen reader would have an idea of why they're not hearing any content.

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

#87

Post by majewsky »

bookofjoe wrote: post #64
majewsky wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Eh, it's not like I crave copyreading. So I don't mind being automated away by spell checkers in that department.

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

#88

Post by unit22 »

lioeters wrote: post #59
philo23 wrote: post #46

Not seen anyone mention it yet, but the Accessibility feature in Firefox (might only be available in Nightly/developer edition, not sure) built into the developer tools are pretty good. You need to go into the dev tools settings to enable it from memory. It gives you access to what is essentially an "accessibility DOM" that shows you how the page's structure will look to a screen reader, and you can also check the co…

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

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

#89

Post by x0x0 »

throwaway857384 wrote: post #54
x0x0 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what are your rates and why are you qualified?

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!

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

#90

Post by dingus »

leowoo91 wrote: post #43
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…

+ see if browser's readability function works (for long-read pages)

Does anyone else find this to be incredibly inconsistent between browsers? Edge is probably the best, surprisingly. Safari is the worst, it sometimes ignores entire sections of an article, regardless of using correct semantic markup.

I basically gave up on this, and just focus on using the appropriate semantic HTML tags, it's not my problem if a browser mangles it.

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