Testing and maintainance

If you are providing the testing environment, consider the accessibility of the facility and any included accommodations. Are there adequate elevators and ramps? Wheelchair accessible bathrooms? Adequate room to accommodate mobility devices? Time and space for any necessary breaks? A nice bowl of water and a place to rest for any service animals? Always remember to ensure that the user testing environment and procedures themselves are accessible.

Test early, and test often

Accessibility testing should be a part of the ongoing testing of any interactive project. While the importance of real user testing probably can’t be overstressed, you should address any known accessibility barriers before you have users with disabilities test a project. Consider using the following methods to detect accessibility issues yourself.

When manually testing a website, always test everything with keyboard input. This will help ensure robust compatibility with a wide variety of input devices, as keyboard inputs can be remapped to various other input mechanisms.

Disable technologies

Try selectively disabling the following technologies to quickly assess the potential accessibility of a webpage.

• Disable Scripting and verify that all content is still available.
• Disable CSS and verify that the content has a logical reading flow and informative hierarchy. Furthermore, verify that no background or decorative images are rendering.
• Disable Images and verify that the content is still understandable, and that missing images are sufficiently described.

Pay special attention to any applets, plug-ins, or other novel elements that may not conform perfectly to web standards. Test everything with keyboard input.

Screen reader testing

Test with dedicated screen reader software. When testing for screen reader compatibility, be aware that not all screen readers function in the same way, or provide the identical output.

Most desktop screen reader users utilize the Windows environment with either JAWS or NVDA. Most mobile screen reader users utilize the iOS environment with VoiceOver.

While a website should be equally accessible to all devices and browsers, it may be useful to note that Firefox (in Windows) is the most commonly used browser with assistive technologies.

Tools that validate code

Always ensure that your code is valid. When validating code, always validate markup first, and style second.

• W3C Markup Validation Service. This site provides a validator for the markup of Web documents in HTML, XHTML, SMIL, MathML, and more.
• W3C CSS Validation Service. This site provides a validator for Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and XHTML documents with embedded styles.

Tools that assess colour contrast

While most accessibility compliance software will also check for colour contrast issues, dedicated colour contrast analysis software can provide advanced functionality and more powerful remediation features.

• Colour Contrast Analyser. This desktop application for macOS & Windows can be used to analyze the colour contrast of any elements that appears on a computer screen.
• ColourContrast. This website is a simple online tool that tests foreground and background colour combinations for accessibility, calculating contrast ratios and checking WCAG 2.1 compliance for text, UI components, and graphics.
• Tanaguru Contrast Finder. This site can help you adjust colour pairings in order to meet WCAG compliance.

Tools that assess colour contrast & accessibility compliance

While software cannot ensure that something is effectively accessible to a real person, it can help quickly detect some issues with compliance.

• WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool. This site provides an excellent web accessibility evaluation tool for manually reviewing a single page’s accessibility compliance.
• WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool Browser Extensions. This browser plugin for Chrome or Firefox provides WAVE accessibility analysis technology directly in the browser.
• Axe Developer Tools. These accessibility testing tools can be integrated into Chrome and Firefox using browser plugins, and can also be accessed through Android and iOS apps.
• Pope Tech.This enterprise level accessibility reporting service will scan and review an entire website for accessibility problems using WAVE accessibility analysis technology.

Nearly all websites are a continuous work in progress. Content, including new images, is updated and expanded, and new features and functionality are added over time. It is entirely possible for a highly accessible website to gradually become less and less accessible over time. Plan, design, and train for the ongoing maintenance of the site and its accessibility standards.

Ensure that there is adequate ongoing accessibility testing included as part of the post-launch maintenance program. Always include people with disabilities in the testing process.

1. Make sure that accessibility has been openly discussed with key stakeholders throughout the process, starting from the beginning.
2. Choose development tools, frameworks, platforms, and technologies that are conducive to supporting accessibility.
3. Implement technology that will automatically update the site map or other navigational mechanisms as the site evolves.
4. Comment code, and annotate the back-end interface with any relevant instructions for maintaining accessibility.
5. Create a style guide for stakeholders who will be working with the site. Set policies and develop training.
6. Make sure there are highly accessible mechanisms in place for users to report any potential issues.