The Importance of Accessibility Testing for Enterprises
Why is accessibility testing important? Well, over 2 billion people around the globe have a physical disability and face functional challenges when using technology. With web accessibility testing, development companies can ensure that users (including those with special needs) can easily access a website, application, or any mobile app.
Web Accessibility is Growing in Stature (and Rightly So)
In his recent webinar, Paul Smythe of Barclays stressed the "business case for website accessibility." However, despite its importance, organizations continue to fail at realizing effective web accessibility and conforming to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).
According to WebAIM's 2023 accessibility evaluation, the top 1 million websites reported over 49 million unique accessibility errors on their home pages. Also, 96.3% of website home pages in 2023 had detected WCAG Level 2 failures — a slight improvement from 96.8% in 2022. Overall, webpages with detectable WCAG failures have decreased by only 1.5% over the last four years.
So, why is WCAG important for web accessibility? Since the introduction of WCAG 2.0 in 2008, WCAG documents have clearly explained how to make online content more accessible to people with disabilities. Most of the current WCAG guidelines are categorized under four headings: perceivable, understandable, operable, and robust.
Efficient accessibility testing ensures that applications are now accessible to every user. In fact, in 2023, applications with compliance to WCAG Level 2 are expected to outperform their closest competitors by 50%.
Here are some more reasons for its growing importance in enterprises:
- Improves the usability and performance of websites or apps, thus impacting the user’s experience positively.
- Enhances the website’s SEO score as search engines like Google favor accessible content.
- Enables applications to reach a wider audience, thus improving conversion rates and revenues.
- Enhances product quality by embedding audio tools into product descriptions.
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To that end, let's discuss how ACCELQ can support accessibility testing.
5 Ways How ACCELQ Supports Robust Accessibility Testing
Recognized by Forrester as a leader in "Continuous Test Automation," ACCELQ's test automation platform enables companies to make products and applications more accessible to users with disabilities.
Here are five ways in which ACCELQ supports automated accessibility testing for its global customers:
1. Validates the WCAG-Defined Accessibility Parameters
With its automated testing platform, ACCELQ can verify web accessibility during test execution. Hence, it can validate the accessibility parameters (defined by WCAG 2.0 and 2.1), compliance requirements, and best practices.
In essence, ACCELQ performs each validation contextually for each application page during its automated test execution. The good part is that application development does not require adding any testing code for the same.
2. Enables Web Accessibility Validation with One-click.
By using ACCELQ, organizations can easily validate web accessibility with a single click. All that they need to do is click the "Non-Functional Testing" section in the run mode of test automation. This can automatically start the validation of the web accessibility parameters before every action in the real test scenario.
3. Automates the Accessibility Testing Process.
With ACCELQ, organizations can now embed accessibility testing into the functional test cycle. This means that it can perform test automation on every page for web accessibility validation. This eliminates the various challenges associated with manually testing every page and navigational path in the application workflow.
4. Comprehensively Reports Web Accessibility Violations.
As mentioned before, the ACCELQ test automation platform validates every web page element from the beginning of the test scenario. Furthermore, on completion of the validation, it generates a test report with details of all the web accessibility violations. Each violation is listed based on the category and severity of the WCAG failure.
Accessibility violations are grouped under the following 3 categories:
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"Needs Attention" Category
This category is for all reported issues that require an immediate remedy (as prescribed by WCAG 2.0/ 2.1 on Level A and AA standards).
"Probable Issues" Category
This category is for all reported issues that software testers cannot ascertain for severity. Therefore, it requires an expert reviewer to classify the issue.
Best Practices" Category
This category is for all reported issues that software testers cannot ascertain for severity. Therefore, it requires an expert reviewer to classify the issue.
5. Features an Easy-to-Use & Learn Intuitive Interface for Accessibility Testing.
With the release of version 6.0, ACCELQ has made significant improvements to its user interface, making it more user-friendly and intuitive to support accessibility testing. Here are some of its notable features:
- Design Studio:Design Studio is a test scenario development environment used to automatically develop scenarios in a codeless manner. What’s more impressive is that users can play back their scenarios in real-time on a live browser for instant validation and action.
- AI-Powered Smart Recorder:This version also features an AI-powered smart recorder in the Action Logic Editor tool. Useful for web application testing, this can accelerate the development of testing logic and record validations.
- Self-Managed Views:With the testing logic developed by the smart recorder, the ACCELQ system can automatically create optimal views for every context. Users can now automatically record any incremental logic or future enhancements without any manual intervention.
- Playback:Using the new “Playback” feature, users can instantly validate any test logic. To this end, they can combine UI and non-UI statements as part of the logic and information transfer. For instance, they can prepare a statement to read usernames from an Excel file and immediately playback the statement.
The Bottom Line
To cater to a wider audience, including users with disabilities, accessibility testing is gaining more acceptance and importance in product companies. With the growing demand for smartphones and mobile apps, accessibility testing will continue to remain strong in the coming years.
ACCELQ provides an easy and user-friendly test automation platform to validate web accessibility according to the parameters defined by WCAG 2.0 and 2.1. Here's a comprehensive list of features that are part of ACCELQ 6.0.
Our team of professionals can consult and implement your next accessibility testing initiative. Get in touch today!
Geosley Andrades
Director, Product Evangelist at ACCELQ.
Geosley is a Test Automation Evangelist and Community builder at ACCELQ. Being passionate about continuous learning, Geosley helps ACCELQ with innovative solutions to transform test automation to be simpler, more reliable, and sustainable for the real world.
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