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Web accessibility has become a priority as online interactions now permeate every aspect of daily life. Ensuring your website is accessible to users of all abilities is no longer just an ethical responsibility—it’s also a legal obligation. Automated accessibility testing offers an efficient and budget-friendly way to assess and improve web content, enabling organizations to meet these growing demands.
The Rise of Automated Accessibility Testing
Countries worldwide are adopting the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and integrating them into legal requirements for websites. Automated website accessibility testing tools have become an invaluable asset for companies seeking compliance. While manual testing (testing done by a human) is thorough, it’s sometimes not feasible and often cost prohibitive. Automated tools, on the other hand, can audit thousands of web pages quickly and provide ongoing compliance checks.
How Automated Website Accessibility Testing Works
Automated testing tools analyze your website’s code against WCAG standards, flagging common accessibility errors. These tools excel at identifying structural issues in a website, such as:
- Page Structure and Navigation: Ensuring menus are navigable for assistive technology users, and that headings and page regions are correctly marked.
- Readability and Contrast: Verifying font size and contrast to ensure optimal readability, especially for users with visual impairments.
- Link Functionality: Detecting broken or uninformative links like “click here” and ensuring hover elements are easily identifiable.
- Alt Text for Images and Icons: Highlighting missing or redundant alt text for images and web elements.
- PDF Accessibility: Scanning PDFs for missing alt text, incorrect tab order, and broken form controls.
- Button Functionality: Ensuring buttons are correctly labeled, large enough to click, and functional.
This broad coverage makes automated testing a fast and efficient way to assess your website’s basic accessibility compliance.
Why Automated Testing is Crucial
Even with meticulous manual auditing, accessibility can’t be entirely managed by hand, especially on large websites with frequent updates. Automated accessibility testing saves time and resources by continuously monitoring websites, allowing teams to focus on fixing issues instead of searching for them. This constant vigilance helps you identify recurring issues quickly and prevents non-compliance from becoming a costly problem.
Key advantages include:
- Auditing thousands of pages simultaneously.
- Highlighting multiple errors caused by a single root issue.
- Educating teams on accessibility through reporting and insights.
- Prioritizing critical issues for faster remediation.
- Monitoring progress with detailed reports on compliance over time.
The Limits of Automation
While automated tools are powerful, they can’t detect everything. Automated tools can identify about 30% of accessibility issues. Issues requiring contextual understanding—such as whether alt text is truly descriptive or whether video captions are appropriately synchronized—require human analysis. This is where manual testing complements automation. For a comprehensive accessibility strategy, automated testing should be your first line of defense, followed by manual audits to address more nuanced challenges.
Best Practices for Implementing Automated Website Accessibility Testing
For most organizations, a hybrid approach combining automated and manual testing is the best solution. Automated tools should regularly scan your site for quick-fix issues, while manual testing is reserved for deeper analysis. The size of your website, frequency of updates, and available resources will influence your testing approach.
Investing in a robust automated solution can make a significant difference. Access Design Studio’s automated solution, Accessibility PageScan, goes beyond flagging errors; it provides detailed recommendations on how to fix them, making it easier for teams without accessibility expertise to take action.
Tracking Progress and Ensuring Ongoing Compliance
Accessibility is not a one-time task—it’s a continuous process. Tools like our Accessibility SiteScan allow you to monitor your site’s accessibility score over time, giving you a clear view of progress toward WCAG compliance. With our detailed accessibility analytics, your team can efficiently work toward improving accessibility and ensuring long-term compliance.
Conclusion
Automated accessibility testing is indispensable for businesses looking to provide an inclusive online experience. By combining automated and manual methods, organizations can efficiently detect and resolve accessibility issues, ensuring compliance with WCAG standards and improving user experiences for everyone.
Want to give our free Accessibility SiteScan a try? Get a free one-page scan of your site.
