Web Accessibility Testing: What Can be Tested and How
Written on September 15, 2012
The Short Version
Read this if you’re disinclined to read the entire list of specific WCAG Success Criterion and look at how each can be tested.
If someone was to ask me what I consider to be my biggest strengths when it comes to accessibility, I’d say it is in testing. I’ve been involved in doing accessibility testing for the last 9 years of my career. I’ve used nearly every enterprise tool that exists for accessibility, been involved in developing them, developed my own, and have done hundreds of hours of manual code review, use case testing, and usability testing. As tedious and boring as some people make testing seem, I truly enjoy accessibility testing. I think of myself as a CSI, looking for clues left behind by developers. One thing I am interested in is finding the most efficient ways to do testing.
The thing about automatic testing is that there are some things which can be tested by machine testing quite reliably. For instance, either you have provided an alt attribute for IMG elements or you have not; either you have provided a LABEL for form fields or [...]