A short guide to accessibility testing

The version of this that works is simpler than the version most people imagine. Everything we would tell a client about accessibility testing in the time it takes to drink a coffee.

The cost of retrofitting accessibility is several times the cost of building it in. The version that survives contact with a real deadline is the simple one.

The reason this keeps coming up

Automated tools catch perhaps a third of real issues. The cost of getting this wrong is rarely visible on the day it happens. Assume whoever inherits this will have half your context and none of your patience.

Where to start

Keyboard-only testing finds problems in minutes. Where this goes wrong is almost never a lack of knowledge. If two people in the business would answer this differently, that gap is the actual problem.

Warning signs

Testing with disabled users finds what nothing else does. Where this goes wrong is almost never a lack of knowledge. It is worth deciding this deliberately rather than inheriting whatever the last person set up.

What this looks like day to day

Accessibility work almost always improves the experience for people who have no impairment at all. Three things worth confirming about accessibility testing before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Testing with disabled users finds what nothing else does — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

If you are not sure where your systems currently stand on this, it takes us about an hour to find out.