Accessibility testing.
We all know we need to conduct accessibility
testing of our entire website.
There are two types of accessibility testing
that you’ve probably heard
about: manual accessibility testing
and automated accessibility testing.
But what is the difference and
how can you choose between them?
So let’s talk about manual
accessibility testing – what it
entails and its pros and cons.
Manual testing - pros
When it comes to manual accessibility
testing, it can identify all
accessibility errors in your website,
which is great!
But you need to remember on average,
it takes one full day to manually test
one webpage. That’s just not realistic
when you have a large website.
Manual testing - workarounds
So how people have managed to work
around this is that they select a
sub-set of pages to test, and we’ll
see how that can cause problems.
Manual testing - cons
Manual testing takes a lot of time,
but there is another problem with manual
testing. Without a proper testing framework,
each accessibility tester tends to come up
with different results. This means that
you could test the same page by three
different people and have three different
numbers of errors.
What this means is that manual accessibility
testing isn’t really reliable. Only a
small number of pages are tested and
therefore fixed, and if there isn’t a
testing framework, even these pages are
likely to not meet accessibility
standards consistently.
So let’s talk about automated accessibility
testing – what it entails and its pros and cons.
Automated testing - pros
When it comes to automated accessibility
testing, it can test all pages on your website,
and quickly – which is great!
And there are no people required! Just
press a big red button and it’s done!
But you need to remember on average,
automated testing tools can only find
30 percent of all accessibility errors.
That means 30 percent of errors can be
identified by automated accessibility
testing tools, but it also means that
70 percent of all accessibility errors are
missed by automated
accessibility testing tools.
Automated testing - cons
Although automated testing doesn’t require
people, there remains a huge amount of testing
that still needs to be done.
What this means is that automated accessibility
testing isn’t really reliable. Only a small
number of errors are tested
and therefore fixed.
The problem is that automated accessibility
testing is fast, but it can only identify
30 percent of all accessibility errors
(for example, images missing ALT attributes).
The remainder of the testing needs to be done
manually, and that takes a lot of people power.
AccessibilityOz has a solution: OzART.
OzART is different. OzART is an
accessibility system.
Yes, OzART has automated testing, and
can identify approximately 30 percent of
errors this way. But through our accessibility
testing framework, 60 percent
of all accessibility testing
can be done within OzART. We call this
Facilitated Automated Testing, as the tool
categorises information so it is easy –
and most importantly, quick! –
for manual testing to be done, and we’ll
look at an example on the next slide.
The remaining 10 percent of the testing
requires a tester to go back to the site,
but OzART provides detailed instructions on
how to complete the testing, which means that
the results will be consistent across testers.
What is OzART facilitated testing?
Basically, the tool categorises information
in a way for a human to quickly determine
whether something passes or fails
accessibility requirements.
In this example, there are four images.
The first one is of a nuclear explosion that has
the ALT attribute of "08-29-2013nucleartest",
which is not a good description of the image.
Remember that ALT attributes are read aloud by
screen readers, so people with vision impairments
know what the image is displaying.
The second ALT attribute is even worse.
It reads “31319”.
The next two images have
much better ALT attributes,
the first being “A Mongolian family in Tehran,
Mongolia who cultivates potatoes in their yard”
and “Aerial view of UN Headquarters
in New York City.”
An experienced accessibility tester
can identify which of these
pass and fail within seconds.
If they had to go to the site and test this
manually, it could take up to ten minutes.
The other great thing about OzART
is that it groups images if they
occur on your site more than once.
That way, a tester can review it once
and determine if it passes
or fails. If this was done via manual
testing, the tester would need to review
every single image on the site.
OzART - pros
When it comes to OzART, it can test all pages
in your website just like an automated
accessibility testing tool, and it provides
facilitated testing to make the remaining
testing more streamlined,
and most importantly, consistent.
How does this translate into the real world?
AccessibilityOz has a contract
with a Fortune 10 company
to test five 15,000 page websites
(that’s 7,500 pages)
every week in under 30 hours.
That’s four minutes per page.
What this means is that OzART tests for
all errors and all pages, which means that
your entire website will be compliant.
Talk to us about OzART today.
Visit www.accessibilityoz.com to learn more
about our products, services and free resources.
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