Testing Tools

Testing tools will help you determine if digital resources are accessible.

Web Testing Tools

The right tool depends on your use case, expertise, and needs.

Document Testing Tools

For checking digital documents, most common authoring tools have built-in checkers. Find instructions and more information by tools:

Other Tools for Web

  • Web Disability Simulator
    Lets you simulate color blindness, low vision, dyslexia and more.
  • Color Contrast Analyzer
    Most automated testing tools will find contrast problems, but occasionally they are not able to do so with accuracy because of diverse reasons. When this is the case the Color Contrast Analyzer browser add on is invaluable.
  • HeadingsMap
    Lightweight report of structure of the page (headings and landmarks).
  • Stylus
    Useful to inject styles into a page - provide visible focus, highlight all images without an alt attribute, etc. You will seldom need to use this, but it will be very useful when you do. Requires some knowledge of CSS.
  • Photosensitive Epilepsy Analysis Tool (PEAT)
    A Windows tool to help authors determine whether animations or video in their content are likely to cause seizures.

Using the Tools

We can only provide documentation and support for a limited number of tools.

Accessibility Insights for the Web

This browser add-on uses the axe testing engine. The tools provides some scaffolding and support documentation. See the screencasts below.

WAVE

WAVE can be used to scan a single webpage. WebAIM has some simple documentation on using this tool. The WAVE Chrome Extension is probably the easiest way to incorporate it into your workflow.

Next Steps

Automated testing is just the first step. With that information, your manual functional testing can focus on the things that automatic testing will likely miss.

Begin with simple non-technical tests designed specifically to surface issues that will not be reported by automated testing.