Accessibility TestChat

Tonights TestChat was a topic close to my heart, Accessibility Testing.

You can read the full transcript on CrowdChat but a brief summary is below:

Q1: What do you consider accessibility testing to be?

@deborah.lee gave us a fantastic baseline for the discussion to grow on here “how easy it is for someone with a disability to access and interact with the content” which expanded to an impairment and “multiple ways - visually, audibly, mentally. also permanently or temporary” and as @kaybeard later pointed out “Accessibility, which focuses primarily on “disabled” users, is a poor representation of what we now know are actually excluded users.”

Q2: Where do you go to find out about accessibility information?

I’m going to tag out to another Club post here for that, there’s some great answers and possible room for expansion

@decosta “would ask other devs/qas/PO’s who may have experience in accessibility testing” which is, in my experience, a pretty solid approach. I previously worked on a team where one of the devs was a wizard with accessibility.

Q3: What tools do you use to help you with your accessibility testing?

I personally use https://www.nvaccess.org/ and Spectrum on Chrome (I’ve mentioned this in Accessibility Testing: Colour Blindness Accessibility) but I loved the suggestions from @kaybeard “SiteImprove
koa11y
wave
turning off JavaScript
turning of images
screen readers”

and “toptal’s color accessibility checker for color blind users like myself to show colleagues how a user may not be able to see text if the contrast is off.”

Q4: How can you build accessibility into your product design? - user stories, personas etc.

I’m interested to hear more from Carly Gerard about this “run accessibility tests in continuous dev/integration environments. If someone makes a commit and doesn’t pass automated tests, the commit fails and doesn’t make it to the master branch”

Q5: What can we do to raise awareness around the variety of accessibility issues? For example helping with dyslexia, dementia or memory loss

@kaybeard was in with another fantastic response here “The sales team could have a great impact with leading the clients down that path. The pitch of “How many of your users are currently excluded from using your app/site?” is a powerful question. When clients realize they may be losing business/revenue from users awareness begins.”

@deborah.lee too “show how easy, quick and cheap it is to fix some accessibility issues!”

@decosta was in with one I never would have thought of “Look to other mediums for inspiration. I know of people who test for accessibility for boardgames. Colour/Symbol contrast. Whether the game requires alot of facts to be held in your head. Size of text on the board. It all carries over…”

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