Whether it’s online banking, using a restaurant’s app to order food, managing doctor appointments, getting customer support, or any number of daily interactions, the digital experience is now the primary way we all navigate the world. But for millions of people, these digital experiences are inaccessible, hindering their ability to engage with your business.
With accessibility testing, you can ensure that your websites and apps are accessible to all your users, regardless of their ability. Here’s how to use accessibility testing to create an equal digital experience for all your users.
What is Accessibility Testing?
Accessibility testing helps ensure that your website, apps, and other digital experiences are equally usable to all, including people with disabilities impacting their hearing, vision, speech, cognition, and motor skills. This kind of testing helps you discover and remove barriers that may prevent users from fully interacting with your website or app, making it a critical component of your overall usability testing process.
Whether it's ensuring that your app is readable for people who are color blind, that your website is navigable using a keyboard or voice instead of a mouse, that a screen reader can interpret your content correctly for your blind users, or any number of other accommodations, accessibility testing helps ensure you create an inclusive digital experience for all.
Accessibility testing helps you meet the four principles of accessibility as defined by the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG):
Perceivable: All users can perceive the information being presented.
Operable: All users can operate the interface.
Understandable: All users can understand both the presented information and how to operate the interface.
Robust: The content can be accessed and interpreted reliably even as technologies and user agents (such as assistive technologies) evolve.
Why is Accessibility Testing Important?
Accessibility testing allows you to serve all your users better, grow your business, and reduce your business risk.
Make your digital experiences accessible to all.
The World Health Organization estimates that nearly 1.3 billion people globally have a significant disability, representing roughly 16% percent of the world’s population. In addition, the elderly population continues to grow; the number of Americans ages 65 and older is expected to grow by 47% by 2050. As a result, more and more of your users will be at an age where they naturally struggle with vision impairment, hearing loss, issues with motor skills, or declines in cognitive ability.
Utilizing accessibility testing as part of your visual testing, UI testing, and overall site accessibility test process helps you create a world where everyone has an equal opportunity to shop, browse, work, communicate, and engage. The bottom line: prioritizing accessibility is the right thing to do.
Grow your bottom line.
Not only is creating accessible experiences the right thing to do for your customers, but it’s also the right thing for your business. By making your digital experiences accessible, you can attract millions of people who want to use a product like yours. Should your competitors fail to prioritize accessibility, your product will be the frontrunner, allowing you to easily capture and defend market share.
In addition, making your websites and apps more accessible for disabled users has the benefit of pushing your designers to create products and services that are more intuitive and user-friendly overall. Not only does this help you capture disabled users, but all your users will benefit as you deliver more innovative, easier-to-use digital experiences. In our 2024 Every Experience Counts study, we found that 70% of people say a poor digital experience can impact their decision to purchase; by improving accessibility, you can help encourage all your customers to keep coming back.
Ensure regulatory compliance and reduce risk.
Accessibility isn’t just a nice-to-have feature; it’s a legal requirement for many markets. ADA and European Accessibility Act (EAA) compliance, along with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and other regional guidelines, all set the standards that your business must comply with to avoid fines and lawsuits.
Not only does maintaining compliance help you avoid legal repercussions, but it also helps protect your brand reputation. In 2023, more than 4,600 ADA lawsuits were filed, setting a new record. Making headlines for being out of compliance is a sure way to alienate prospects, lose customers, and cause irreparable harm to meeting goals such as corporate social responsibility.
Key Accessibility Compliance Requirements
Here are some of the key legal requirements to know about. Remember that some of these requirements apply even if you don’t have business operations in the country; just having users accessing your digital product or service from the covered country can be enough to require compliance.
Region/Country | Relevant Law/Guideline |
United States | Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act |
Canada | Accessible Canada Act (ACA), Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act |
European Union | European Accessibility Act (EAA), EU Web Accessibility Directive or Web and Mobile Accessibility Directive (EN 301 549) |
United Kingdom | Equality Act 2010, Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018 |
Australia | Disability Discrimination Act of 1992 |
Germany | Equal Opportunity Act, BITV 2.0 |
Italy | Stanca Act |
Japan | JIS X 8341-3 |
India | Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016, Guidelines for Indian Government Websites |
Brazil | The Law on Accessibility (L. 10.098) |
What are the Different Types of Accessibility Testing?
There are three complementary testing strategies developers may use:
Manual accessibility testing: With this method, a human tester uses the website or app just like a person with a disability would, such as using a screen reader or keyboard navigation.
Automated accessibility testing: The method uses accessibility testing software to test digital products based on predefined rules and standards, allowing developers to test more code faster.
User accessibility testing: This method relies on end users interacting with the website or app to help identify accessibility issues under real-world conditions.
Automated accessibility testing allows many developers to continuously test for accessibility issues as the product is being built. As a result, they can build with accessibility in mind and address problems at the moment instead of addressing accessibility later in development. Not only does this save time and money, but it helps ensure that accessibility is foundational to the digital experience, improving the user experience.
This isn’t to say that automation is the only solution. Many accessibility tests are still better done manually or by monitoring how users interact with the product. The key is to automate the tests you can to free up more time for the critical manual and user testing required to ensure a comprehensive, accurate testing strategy.
Common Accessibility Issues
There are dozens of accessibility issues to test for to ensure usability for all. Common issues that automated accessibility testing tools can help you uncover include:
Missing or inadequate alt text: Without this text, visually impaired users will struggle to use screen readers effectively when navigating your website. Use descriptive text to ensure images can be verbally conveyed.
Insufficient color contrast: Using similar colors can make it hard for people with color blindness to read text. Test color accessibility to ensure enough contrast between text and the background to be readable by users with visual impairments.
Keyboard accessibility: People with hand tremors or motor disabilities can have difficulty making precise mouse clicks, while blind users can’t see where to click. All interactive features on your website should be navigable using a keyboard or similar technology.
How to Start Accessibility Testing
Accessibility testing shouldn’t be something that waits. Instead, it should be prioritized at the beginning of your design and development process, allowing your team to catch and fix minor issues when they are easy to fix. Accessibility testing isn’t a one-time effort. It’s an ongoing process you should conduct through design, development, post-launch, and whenever you update your product.
Sauce Labs provides a powerful, extensible end-to-end single platform for testing, paving the way for a more simple, continuous quality approach to testing. Sauce Labs partners with Deque Systems, the trusted leader in digital accessibility, to help customers easily integrate accessibility testing into their quality processes for increased visibility at every level of the software development process.
The enterprise-ready integration between Sauce Labs’ Real Device Cloud and Deque Systems’ axe DevTools® Mobile for Appium, streamlines automated testing to identify critical accessibility issues earlier in development. This integration provides customers with actionable accessibility signals delivered through a comprehensive test results dashboard.
How to Select the Right Web Accessibility Testing Tool
When evaluating web accessibility testing tools, look for a single platform that ticks the following boxes:
Tests both web and mobile apps
Shifts automated testing left so you can catch errors and issues early on
Provides clear step-by-step tests for your in-house testing team
Spots compliance issues with WCAG success criteria and other relevant requirements
Performs continuous, dynamic scans to monitor your site’s accessibility status in the long term
Consolidates all results for easy access, reporting, and analysis
Ideally, you want a tool that integrates seamlessly with your development environment and SDLC. Your ultimate goal should be to make testing faster, cheaper, and more effective.
In addition to Deque Systems’ axe™ tool suite, free tools include WAVE and Lighthouse, which both allow you to check a website's accessibility right from the browser.
The Time to Prioritize Accessibility is Now
With millions of users–and potential customers–requiring accessible digital experiences now is the time to prioritize accessibility. By integrating accessibility testing into every stage of your development process, you ensure that your website or application is usable for all, regardless of their abilities.
Ensuring accessibility can lead to better design, more satisfied users, and a more substantial brand reputation while helping you meet legal obligations in a rapidly evolving regulatory landscape. Whether you're just starting or refining your accessibility practices, making accessibility testing a priority demonstrates a commitment to all users, expanding your reach and impact.
Want to learn how Sauce Labs can help you automate accessibility testing? Request a demo.
