What does accessibility mean? Accessibility refers to the quality of anything being easily usable or available. This principle holds true for virtually everything today. Around 15 percent of the global population lives with some disability, as reported by the World Health Organization.

Given this, ensuring easy accessibility for these individuals to all vital aspects of life is an ethical imperative, whether it’s everyday amenities, necessities, content on the internet, or even software solutions.

Similarly, in the technological landscape, ensuring any website, mobile app, or digital product is accessible to people with disabilities is important and an empathetic necessity. Accessibility testing plays a significant role in this context. By conducting accessibility testing, businesses can validate and guarantee that their software products are easily operable by individuals with any form of impairment.

But as the world continues to grow and evolve day by day, these digital products become more complex, which certainly makes performing manual accessibility testing a difficult endeavor. Automated accessibility testing tools emerge as a quick and simple solution to address this problem.

In this article, we will look at accessibility testing, briefly explain automated accessibility testing, and discuss why it is important for businesses. Let’s get started!

Table of Content

• What is Accessibility Testing?
• Why is Automated Accessibility Testing Important?
  • Increased Efficiency
  • Early Defect Detection
  • Enhanced Market Reach
  • Guarantees Regulatory Compliance
  • User Satisfaction & Engagement
• Conclusion

What is Accessibility Testing?

Accessibility testing refers to the process of meticulously evaluating and assessing a software product or application to ensure compliance with government accessibility laws and that it provides equal access to all users, including those with impairments, without barriers impeding their experiences.

As per the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), there are specific principles based on which accessibility testing is evaluated. These include:

• Perceivability: Both the information and the software’s UI should be presented in a way that users can easily perceive using one or more of their senses.
• Operability: The UI elements in the software must be readily operable by users.
• Understandability: Users should be able to understand the information and content encompassed within the software.
• Robust: The UI content must be robust enough to be able to seamlessly work with current and even future technologies for different users.

There are two ways one can perform accessibility testing for their software. Manually, where human software testers go through the software, testing its accessibility, or with the help of automated testing tools or programs, which make the process rapid, effortless, and more efficient.

Why is Automated Accessibility Testing Important?

While manual accessibility testing is more comprehensive, can catch a higher percentage of faults or flaws, and necessitates an individual team or accessibility experts who specialize in the field, automated accessibility testing requires only the selection, examination, setup, and operation of automated accessibility testing tools. Once set up, these tools can effortlessly trawl through your website, mobile app, or digital product, validating it thoroughly for any compliance issues or defects that act as obstacles to accessibility.

Automated accessibility testing can handle all your software accessibility test checks, allowing you to focus solely on preventing and eliminating the issues identified. It can also help you save quite a bit of time and money that would otherwise have to be spent on manual accessibility testing.

But that’s not all. Automated accessibility testing has the potential to produce a number of benefits for your business. Let’s next take a deep dive into the importance of automated accessibility testing and look at its benefits.

1. Increased Efficiency

One of the main benefits automated accessibility testing brings to the table is enhanced efficiency. Manual accessibility, as we’ve touched upon, involves human testers going through each element of the software, pinpointing accessibility issues. Automated testing, on the other hand, significantly streamlines issue identification. The testing tools can perform concurrent tests on your software, detecting accessibility flaws with efficiency and enabling software testers to divert their core focus to mitigating those issues instead of performing manual testing. This can enhance their productivity and allow them to work more efficiently.

2. Early Defect Detection

If automated accessibility testing has been integrated into the development life cycle since the beginning, it can help businesses find and address risks or issues before they become more complicated and pricey to fix. This approach guarantees that any accessibility-related issues and defects are found and fixed early in the development cycle, saving significant time and resources. It can help ensure the delivery of a software product to market that’s accessible to all and free of errors.

3. Enhanced Market Reach

By making your software products accessible to users with disabilities, you open new avenues to expand your market. Digital assets easily usable by people with diverse abilities allow you to tap into this unexplored territory and capitalize on its benefits. Automated accessibility testing helps you identify, assess, and resolve all potential accessibility issues more effectively, enabling you to create inclusive software accessible to all users, regardless of their individual abilities. In turn, you can reach a larger audience.

4. Guarantees Regulatory Compliance

No business would be looking forward to getting burdened with legal troubles or complications. Automated testing enables accurate and efficient analysis of the software components, elements, and functionality against the appropriate legal and regulatory requirements. Having addressed those issues, businesses can not only ensure compliance with accessibility regulations but also steer clear of such complications.

5. User Satisfaction & Engagement

Performing accessibility testing is more than just a requirement for businesses. One must ensure there’s an equal and fair environment for everyone, including those with disabilities. Automated accessibility testing enables you to identify and address all issues associated with accessibility, which improves user satisfaction and drives improved engagement. Fulfilling this moral obligation can also help position your brand for success and strengthen its reputation by showing users you care about them.

Conclusion

In conclusion, ensuring your software’s accessibility is absolutely crucial in today’s digital world. Automated accessibility testing is a great help in this regard, making the process extensively accurate, easy, and rapid. It is a given that its effectiveness can be greatly boosted, provided common mistakes are avoided during automated testing. 

Keep in mind that while automation in accessibility testing helps make the job easier, there are still some aspects of testing that require a human touch and expertise. Their involvement is necessary during the development lifecycle. By ensuring your software’s complete accessibility, you can reach a greater audience base and promote inclusivity, allowing users to flawlessly navigate and enjoy the digital world. 
At JigNect Technologies Pvt. Ltd., a leading accessibility testing service provider, we specialize in the field and can help you with both manual and automated accessibility testing. If you’re a business currently looking for first-rate accessibility testing services, consider contacting JigNect Technologies.