Identifying and fixing accessibility issues can be a daunting task for developers and designers. Fortunately, there are a many tools available to help with this process. These are the (free!) tools we are using when evaluating your website or app.
Web
Most of accessibility testing is done manually. There are tools that can help you with that, and there are automatic tools to supplement the manual testing.
WAVE: This web accessibility evaluation tool provides visual feedback on web pages to indicate accessibility issues. It highlights errors, alerts, and structural elements, and includes a toolbar for easy navigation.
aXe browser plugin: This automated accessibility plugin analyzes web pages for accessibility issues and generates a report that can be used to fix them.
Colour Contrast Analyser (CCA): download this tool and use the color picker anywhere on your screen to see if contrast is sufficient.
Accessibility Insights: made for developers by Microsoft. Download the browser extension, or one of the desktop apps for testing Android apps or Windows Apps.
Use a screen reader
Testing with screen readers is absolutely necessary when evaluating the accessibility of your website or desktop application. This survey by WebAIM shows which types of screen readers are most used, and also which operating system and browsers are most popular.
For Windows, we recommend downloading NVDA. It is free and supports many languages.
iOS users have VoiceOver built in.
Do you want to learn how to test with screenreaders? WebAIM answers the most common questions about screenreader testing in this post. They also have a guide on how to start using VoiceOver.
App
App testing is almost entirely done using a screen reader. Android has TalkBack built in and iOS users have VoiceOver. The Appt Foundation has an extensive guide on how to test apps with and without a screen reader.
