How to Automate Accessibility Testing

The challenge of making sure that your product is accessible by all is something that is taken care of by accessibility testing.

This article discusses various aspects of accessibility testing and how you can automate the entire lifecycle for efficient results.

What is Accessibility Testing Automation?

Accessibility testing automation includes automated testing of the applications’ features that ensure everyone can access the application to its full potential. This means that the application should test if differently-abled people face difficulty in performing specific actions without assistance.

The idea behind accessibility is to make all-inclusive software despite the different abilities of the users. You can run Automated Accessibility Tests using Selenium on BrowserStack Automate.

Why is Automated Accessibility Testing Important?

Automated Accessibility Testing plays a key role in building inclusive digital experiences by ensuring equal access for users of all abilities while saving time and ensuring compliance.

Here are the key reasons that make automated accessibility testing important:

• Ensures equal access for users with disabilities, upholding inclusivity as a basic right.
• Helps organizations meet legal accessibility standards and avoid penalties or lawsuits.
• Saves time and reduces manual effort by quickly identifying common accessibility issues.
• Enables large-scale testing across multiple pages and platforms with consistency.
• Promotes ethical responsibility while enhancing user experience and brand reputation.

What is AODA Compliance?

AODA Compliance refers to meeting the requirements of the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, a law in Ontario, Canada, aimed at making spaces, services, and digital content accessible to people with disabilities.

This includes ensuring websites meet accessibility standards, often aligned with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), to support users with visual, auditory, cognitive, or motor challenges.

How do you perform Accessibility Testing?

You can perform accessibility testing both manually and using test automation. To make sure that all the necessary guidelines have been checked, one must test their applications for the following:

1. Testing if the text or the labels are accessible to all – It can assess the ability of the application to check if the users can see the text in case the text and labels are magnified or minimized.
2. Test the contrast of the images/text – To check if the users can access the applications if the contrast is changed in the application to a greater extent.
3. Testing the Navigation of the application – To check if the users will be able to navigate through the entire application keeping in mind the difficulties somebody with a physical difficulty might have to face.
4. Testing the Style Sheets for the application – To check if in case the CSS of the application malfunctions, users will be able to comprehend the entire content displayed on the webpage.
5. Testing the hit area of the application – To make it more accessible to the users, the hit area of the application for more important actions must be easy to perform and interact with the application.

People with disabilities use assistive software for various applications like speech recognition software, screen readers, special keyboards, etc. Therefore, if an application can perform with the assistive software – it adds to the accessibility of the entire application.

Can Accessibility Testing Be Automated?

Yes, accessibility testing can be partially automated.

Automated tools are great for quickly detecting common issues like missing alt text, poor color contrast, or improper heading structures. They can be integrated into CI/CD pipelines to catch problems early in the development cycle.

However, automation has limitations.

Nuanced issues like logical focus order, screen reader behavior, or user experience often require human evaluation. Manual testing remains essential for comprehensive coverage and should complement automated checks.

How to Automate Accessibility Testing?

While testing accessibility features, it is important to consider real user conditions to identify all the bottlenecks in the accessibility that could hamper the user experience of differently-abled users. Hence, testing accessibility on emulators and simulators might not suffice the purpose. One has to test on real devices to understand the extent of accessibility that the UI offers and how the end-user experiences it.

Testing on physical devices might be costly as in-house maintenance becomes difficult for companies. This is where testing on a real device cloud can offer testing under real user conditions cost-effectively. Solutions like Browserstack Automate can be used as it offers 3500+ real browser device combinations to offer a wider coverage with advanced accessibility features like screen readers.

To perform automated accessibility testing with BrowserStack Automate, you will need to perform the following steps:

Step 1: Download the axe.min.js file.

Step 2: Write the test script using any programming language i.e Python, Node.js, Java, PHP, Ruby, C#, Perl, etc. The following test script is written using Python. The test script will load the axe file and the accessibility tests are invoked using the axe-core library.

[python]

from selenium import webdriver

import json


desired_cap = {

        "browser": "chrome",

        "browser_version": "latest",

        "os": "windows",

        "os_version": "10",

        'build': 'Python Accessibility Test Build',

        'name': 'Axe-core testing microsoft'

        }

driver = webdriver.Remote(

    desired_capabilities=desired_cap,

    command_executor='https://YOUR_USERNAME:YOUR_ACCESS_KEY@hub-cloud.browserstack.com/wd/hub'

    )

driver.get("https://www.microsoft.com")

axe_script = open('./axe.min.js', 'r')

driver.execute_script(axe_script.read())

axe_script.close()

result = driver.execute_async_script('var callback = arguments[arguments.length - 1];'

                                     'axe.run().then(results => callback(results))')

file = open("./report.json", "w")

file.write(json.dumps(eval(str(result))))

file.close()

driver.quit()

[/python]

Step 3: The results of the tests are then stored in a JSON report as seen below

The report consists of information on metrics like:

1. Violations: The Elements failed in the rules
2. Passes: The Elements passed in the rules
3. Incomplete: Incomplete results that were aborted for several reasons.
4. Inapplicable: Rules that had no matching content on the page.

Top Accessibility Automation Testing Tools

Here is a list with a brief overview of the top accessibility automation testing tools.

1. BrowserStack Accessibility

BrowserStack offers both manual and automated accessibility testing on real devices and browsers through their real device cloud. With seamless integration into CI/CD pipelines, it helps teams identify and fix accessibility issues early.

BrowserStack’s tools support WCAG compliance and make inclusive development easier at scale.

Key Features:

• Web Accessibility Compliance: Scan your website for WCAG compliance and set up recurring scans to maintain standards.
• Faster Workflow Scans: Detect issues like missing alt text and color contrast in real-time, testing multiple workflows in a single scan.
• Automated Accessibility Testing: Integrate accessibility testing into regression suites effortlessly, with auto-generated reports and no build maintenance.
• Precise Issue Tracking: Automatically prioritize issues based on type, components, and WCAG violations, and pinpoint exact sources with workflow logs.

2. Web Accessibility Checker: A browser-based tool that scans web pages for WCAG violations and offers detailed reports to improve compliance.

3. Axe-core-maven-html: A Maven plugin that integrates axe-core into your test pipeline to perform HTML-based accessibility scans during builds.

4. Axe-WebDriverJS: Built on top of Selenium WebDriver and axe-core, this tool allows accessibility testing in automated UI test scripts.

5. Accessibility Insights: A suite of tools from Microsoft for testing web and Windows applications, featuring fast automated checks and guided manual assessments.

6. Guidepup: An open-source testing library focused on screen reader automation and interactions, helping developers test actual accessibility experiences.

7. sa11y: Custom libraries developed by Salesforce to integrate accessibility checks into their internal development processes.

8. UI Automation: Microsoft’s framework for accessibility testing of Windows applications, enabling programmatic access to UI elements.

9. Automated Accessibility Testing Tools (AATT): Yahoo’s tool combining multiple accessibility engines (like Axe and HTMLCodeSniffer) to run checks via command line or web service.

10. Accessibility Developer Tools: A Chrome extension from Google that audits web pages and highlights accessibility problems in the browser.

11. Protractor-Accessibility-Plugin: A plugin for Protractor that integrates accessibility checks into AngularJS test automation workflows.

12. Pa11y: A command-line tool that runs automated accessibility tests using HTMLCodeSniffer and provides easy-to-understand reports.

13. Apple’s Accessibility APIs: Tools and frameworks that enable accessibility testing for iOS/macOS apps, ensuring compatibility with VoiceOver and other assistive features.

14. Google’s Accessibility Test Framework for Android: A set of APIs and utilities to detect accessibility issues in Android apps during automated testing.

15. Color Contrast Analyzer: Checks the contrast ratio between text and background colors to ensure readability and compliance with WCAG standards.

Challenges with Accessibility Testing

Even with the most accurate and user-centric design for the applications, some applications may miss out on some of the significant features that should always be taken care of in terms of accessibility.

Use cases such as the user can access the applications even without being able to use the mouse or understand the application’s content with cognitive disabilities are some of the key areas where accessibility is challenged.

Some of the challenges that may arise with accessibility testing are as follows:

1. Accessibility for Users with Vision Disability

While Making applications accessible for people with vision disabilities, the developers have to be very careful because some users might be fully blind or have color blindness or partial vision impairment. Hence, the application can be accessed without visuals making it understandable for a visually impaired user.

2. Accessibility for Users with Hearing Disability

Similar challenges can be seen for users with hearing disabilities, where the developers must consider that any sort of interaction involving hearing must be accessible to them.

3. Accessibility for Users with Cognitive Disability

The core challenge is that content on web applications must be easily understandable for people with cognitive disabilities, who might not be able to understand the content in the application.

4. Accessibility for Users with Physical Disability

The challenge is to make applications accessible for users that may have physical disabilities that may refrain them from operating a mouse or keyboard.

To make sure all the necessary challenges and guidelines for compliance are taken care of, organizations often go for automated testing for accessibility for faster and more accurate accessibility testing.

Best Practices for Automating Accessibility Testing

Here are some key best practices for automating accessibility testing

• Start Early in the Development Cycle: Integrate accessibility testing from the beginning to identify issues early and reduce costs in the long run.
• Combine Automated and Manual Testing: Use automation for detecting common issues and complement it with manual testing for nuanced accessibility concerns.
• Focus on High-Impact Areas: Prioritize key user flows, interactive elements, and core functionality for thorough testing.
• Use Real-World Devices and Browsers: Test on actual devices and browsers to ensure accurate results and consistent user experiences across platforms.
• Maintain Regular Scans: Set up recurring scans to ensure ongoing compliance and catch new accessibility issues as your website evolves.

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Conclusion

Incorporating accessibility testing into your QA process from the very beginning ensures your software is inclusive and user-friendly for everyone. Automated accessibility testing not only saves time and costs but also helps catch issues early, leading to better digital experiences for all users.

With tools like BrowserStack, you can run comprehensive accessibility tests on real browsers and devices-covering a wide range of platforms and versions.

Useful Resources for Accessibility

• Web Content Accessibility Testing: An Essential Guide
• 10 Most Common Web Accessibility Issues to Solve for
• Must-Have Chrome Extensions for Accessibility Testing
• Cypress Accessibility Testing (with Best Practices)
• Mobile App Accessibility Testing Checklist
• Top 15 Accessibility Automation Tools
• How to Automate Accessibility Testing
• 508 Compliance Testing Tools

Try Accessibility Testing