Accessibility Testing

“Accessibility” is sometimes shortened to “a11y”, with 11 (characters) replacing “ccessibilit”.

Automated accessibility testing tools are designed to identify potential accessibility issues on a website or application, such as missing alternative text for images or incorrect heading structure.

However, automated testing tools have some limitations and cannot catch all accessibility issues. Some accessibility issues require human interpretation and judgment, such as whether a website’s language is clear and easy to understand.

Additionally, automated testing tools can generate false positives or false negatives. False positives occur when the tool reports an issue that is not a problem, and false negatives occur when the tool fails to detect an issue that is a problem. For example, an automated testing tool may flag an image as missing alternative text when it has descriptive text nearby or fail to detect an issue with a complex form that requires user testing to identify.

Human auditors can provide valuable insight and identify issues that automated tools may miss. They can also verify and validate the results generated by the automated testing tools. By combining automated testing with human auditing, website owners can ensure their website is accessible to the broadest possible audience, including people with disabilities.

Despite the limitations, automated testing can catch basic accessibility issues at an early stage of development, enabling human auditors to focus on more significant problems. We use Pa11y.

Usage

Manual Approach

Follow the pa11y instructions to install and run pa11y locally.

Automatic Approach

There is currently no tooling within the Way of Working to use pa11y.

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