Accessibility Testing

There's a lot you can do to test websites and applications for accessibility without being an accessibility expert:

• Why Automated Testing Isn't Enough - automated testing tools are useful, but you need to understand their limitations.
• Keyboard Testing - anything you can do with a mouse, you should be able to do from the keyboard. Here's how to check.
• Visual Testing - you can do a few basic visual tests using only your web browser and Windows settings.
• Screen Reader Testing - testing with a screen reader is harder than it seems. Here's how to get started, but don't do it without getting some training.
• Testing Standards - the process the State of Illinois follows when testing accessibility.

There are a number of free tools that can help you test accessibility. NONE of these tools can test everything that's required to be accessible. (If one says it can, don't use it!). But they're a good start:

• Accessibility Insights for Web - Microsoft's browser extension uses the open-source axe-core engine and adds some helpful manual testing tools.
• axe DevTools - Deque's axe-core-based browser extension is fast, reliable, and careful to minimize false positives.
• ARC Toolkit - TPGi's browser extension is a little more aggressive, which is good if you can recognize false positives.
• Siteimprove - If you use Siteimprove to monitor your website, it makes sense to use the Siteimprove browser extension too.
• WAVE - WebAIM's browser extension and web-based tester is probably the easiest to use and understand, but it can't (yet) test within shadow DOMs. Unless you're sure your site doesn't use them, you probably shouldn't use WAVE.

We use the following example pages for accessibility testing and training:

• IITAA.dev Accessibility Examples & Tests