My feelings about automated accessibility testing have vacillated throughout my career. My introduction to accessibility was through automated testing. As a new web developer I began applying to jobs with US government contractors shortly after 508’s grace period ended. I was rejected several times because my work failed a test by Bobby, the most popular …
In my quest to make accessibility accessible, I’ve created a super-easy-to-use tool that people can use to do accessibility testing. If you can view the page in the browser, you can use this tool. Diagnostic.css is a CSS (Cascading Stylesheets) file which, when applied to a web page, will highlight accessibility errors in the page. …
Earlier this year, I put up the Mother Effing Tool Confuser to help those who may be looking for an automated web accessibility testing tool make an educated decision. I’ve recently decided to do some of my own testing to see which tools do and don’t test the DOM. To do so, I used the …
What if I told you that the WCAG 2.0 recommendation by the W3C is 36 pages, printed? In addition, “How to Meet WCAG 2.0” is 44 pages and “Understanding WCAG 2.0” 230 pages. Not only that, but the accompanying Techniques and Failures for WCAG 2.0 is 780 pages, printed. There are approximately 400 Techniques and …
I gave a presentation on this topic at this year’s CSUN Conference on Disabilities. Due to the popularity of that session, I figured I’d share the salient points in a blog post. The below information is mostly relevant for organizations who are in the market for an enterprise level accessibility testing tool along the lines …
On May 10, 2013, HiSoftware issued a press release: HiSoftware Gives the Cynthia Says Web Accessibility Testing Tool a Makeover . Eager to find out more about this new version, I eagerly went to the site to check it out. This is what I saw: Who puts a CAPTCHA on an Accessibility Testing Tool? CAPTCHA’s …
Many academic papers dealing with web accessibility make use of automated tools as part of their research. For instance, one recently published paper did a comparative analysis of the Forbes 250. Unfortunately, the tool in use did not test the DOM of the pages it analyzed. On one hand, you can say that at least …
In my 10 year career doing usability & accessibility, I’ve used tools all the way back to Bobby back before CAST sold it to Watchfire. I’ve used all the big expensive tools, all the free tools and toolbars. In fact, it was once my job to know what each tool could and could not do. …
The Short Version Read this if you’re disinclined to read the entire list of specific WCAG Success Criterion and look at how each can be tested. If someone was to ask me what I consider to be my biggest strengths when it comes to accessibility, I’d say it is in testing. I’ve been involved in …
Accessibility testing is the testing of a system to determine how the system will perform when accessed by persons with disabilities. Testing of all ICT products and services is important to determining what issues exist and what risk any accessibility issues create for the organization. In my experience, the majority of testing efforts are undertaken …