Digital Accessibility Testing

Testing For Various Types of Disabilities

There are three primary disability categories that should always be considered when testing for accessibility:

  • Mobility disabilities, or physical disabilities, are disabilities involving mobility impairments.
  • Sensory disabilities pertain specifically to the five senses and can include sight, hearing, taste, touch, or smell impairments.
  • Cognitive disabilities include anyone that has a greater difficulty engaging in mental tasks than the average person.

Our testing goes beyond visual accessibility. Our team checks for mobility, sensory and cognitive issues alike. We consider the difficulty of utilizing various controls and the use of logical short sentences and descriptions that would allow for someone with a traumatic brain injury to successfully engage in the intended user experience. We are the only accessibility partner that we know of based in the state of Oklahoma that engages in both automated and manual testing.

What We Test For

When testing for the digital accessibility of a document or website, our team explores a variety of elements:

  • We consistently work to identify missing text alternatives for non-text content, or images with text that cannot be selected or read by assistive devices.
  • Testing is also done to identify any missing captions in time based or video media that may be imbedded in a PDF or a website.
  • Adaptable content is another vital component that our team will help to evaluate, as content should never be limited to one form of interpretation.
  • The relationship between various pieces of content also matters. Headers (H1 and H2 tags), and content tags, matter and can be used to create a hierarchy around how content is read by screen readers and other assistive devices. The order in which these items are presented matters a great deal for the user’s comprehension of on-page content. A meaningful sequence must be established to support the usability of a page or document.
  • Testing considers visual cues that cannot be interpreted by screen readers utilizing a sensory checklist and verifies content orientation which impacts the read order for screen readers dramatically.
  • Colors, fonts, and overall web design can also impact a sites overall accessibility. Color contrast must be high and it is important to avoid using color only as a means of differentiating between multiple objects.
  • Titles matter, too. A document title is different from a file name, though there may be similarities in the context being provided. Titles should be used to clearly articulate to the user the purpose of a document or page.
  • Text images should be presented in a high-resolution format to ensure that the image maintains its integrity when increased by up to 200% in size.
  • Documents should also be designed in such a way that if a user has a need for resizing or reformatting text, they are able to do so.
  • All content in a document should be accessible using a keyboard and documents and webpages should avoid dynamic or pop-up content that may create what is referred to as a keyboard trap. All content must be controllable from a keyboard.

Let Us Be Your Guide

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