Introduction to Accessibility & Accessibility Testing Part - I | nasscom | The Official Community of Indian IT Industry

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Introduction to Accessibility & Accessibility Testing Part - I

Prismatic Softwares

@Prismatic Softwares

October 3, 2022

Project Management Emerging Tech

177

What is Accessibility?
Accessibility aims at Universal Design (i.e., Standard Design) which supports equal inclusion of people with or without disabilities. Design necessarily refers but not limited to Product, Services, Tools, Technologies & Utilities. It includes both Design and Practice which helps to provide same user experience, equal opportunities accessing and helps enjoying same benefits from the system for both, people with and without disabilities and also includes others like old age people (age), literacy, geographies.

Is Accessibility same as Usability?
Often the terms Accessibility and Usability creates a confusion. Accessibility is necessarily a subset of overall Usability.

Why Accessibility Testing is so important? Accessibility testing ensures products, applications, services, hardware or tools developed are accessible to people with disabilities. It is measured around 4 imp principles viz.

1.Perceivable information and user interface – It indicates necessarily how user identifies the contents and user interface by means of its senses or perceiving.

Guideline – Text alternative for non-text contents.

E.g. Instead of magnifying glass or a document with magnifying glass, simple button with text ‘Search’ is quite intuitive. A custom text size would also help for old age users.

2. Operable user interface and navigation – E.g. All functionality available by mouse should be available by Keyboard as well.

3. Understandable information and user interface – This relates to how easily & quickly user is able to clearly understand. E.g., Providing definitions for any unusual words, phrases, idioms, and abbreviations

4. Robust content and reliable interpretation -E.g. In content implemented using markup languages, elements have complete start and end tags, elements are nested according to their specifications, elements do not contain duplicate attributes, and any IDs are unique, except where the specifications allow these features

Regulations, Guidelines & Compliances
In order to facilitate and help differently abled i.e., people with disability, aged people, language barrier, demography’s etc. But it was primarily aimed to help people with disability, provide them the equal rights to access and enjoy the same benefits as of people without disabilities. Some of the key

Various countries have legislation requiring physical accessibility which are (in order of enactment):

• In the US, under the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, new public and private business construction generally must be accessible. Existing private businesses are required to increase the accessibility of their facilities when making any other renovations in proportion to the cost of the other renovations. The United States Access Board is “A Federal Agency Committed to Accessible Design for People with Disabilities.” The Job Accommodation Network discusses accommodations for people with disabilities in the workplace. Many states in the US have their own disability laws.
• In Australia, the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 has numerous provisions for accessibility.
• In South Africa the Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act 2000 has numerous provisions for accessibility.
• In the UK, the Equality Act 2010 has numerous provisions for accessibility.
• In Sri Lanka, the Supreme Court, on 27 April 2011 gave a landmark order to boost the inherent right of disabled persons to have unhindered access to public buildings and facilities.
• In Norway, the Discrimination and Accessibility Act Diskriminerings- og tilgjengelighetsloven defines lack of accessibility as discrimination and obliges public authorities to implement universal design in their areas. The Act refers to issue-specific legislation regarding accessibility in e.g. ICT, the built environment, transport and education.
• In Brazil, the law on the inclusion of people with disabilities has numerous provisions for accessibility.
• In Canada relevant federal legislation includes the Canadian Human Rights Act, the Employment Equity Act, the Canadian Labour Code, and the Accessible Canada Act (Bill-C81) which made Royal Assent on June 21, 2019.
• Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2 is developed through the W3C process in cooperation with individuals and organizations around the world, with a goal of providing a single shared standard for web content accessibility that meets the needs of individuals, organizations, and governments internationally.
WCAG 2.0,2.1, Section 508 etc. are available and conforms to various guidelines for accessibility compliance to web design and development. WCAG 2.0 is widely used.

Type of Compliances
WCAG 2.0 Level A Compliance – It’s also known as ‘Minimal Compliance’. Website not Level A Compliant surely would be very hard to be used by people with disabilities.
WCAG 2.0 Level AA Compliance – It’s also known as ‘Acceptable Compliance’ . This is world wide accepted and most used compliance. Level AA compliant indicates web site is usable for most of the people across the globe with or without disabilities.
Some of the key/notable requirements as below

Color contrast is, in most instances, at least 4.5:1
Alt text or a similar solution is used for images that convey meaning
Navigation elements are consistent across the entire website
Form fields have accurate labels
Headings must be used in logical order
WCAG 2.0 Level AAA Compliance – It’s also known as ‘Optimal Compliance’. This compliance is an indicator that your website is accessible to most of the users, highly usable and makes the experience/interaction very easy for the user
Some of the key/notable requirements as below

Sign language interpretation for audio or video content
Color contrast is at least 7:1 in most instances
Context-sensitive help is available
Section 508 requires that all external public facing content and non-public facing official agency communications be accessible

WCAG 1.0 contains 14 guidelines
WCAG 2.0 contains 61
WCAG 2.1 contains 78 guidelines
Revised Section 508 contains 255 guidelines
Accessibility testing is carried out both manually and using automated way. Automated tools like Sortsite performs both Usability and Accessibility testing. From accessibility point of view it tests

WCAG 2.1 – over 350 tests covering A, AA and AAA guidelines
WCAG 2.0 – over 340 tests covering A, AA and AAA guidelines
Section 508 (2017) – over 330 tests covering A and AA guidelines
Some of the key/notable requirements as below

Some of the other key best tools used for automated accessibility testing are:

QualityLogic
WAVE
JAWS – Reads all elements on the screen to voice
Dynomapper
Accessibility Checker by CKSource

Benefits of Accessibility Testing
Increasing user base & improving business – More than 1% of the population are suffering from disability in one way or the another. Making website accessibility compliant necessary helps in reaching out & inclusion of people with disabilities. This automatically increases the user base and thus improving business transactions. This also helps in market dominance and better profit.
Quality of Product – With accessibility compliant, code quality is substantially improved
Legal Compliance – Many countries have made a mandate that all websites developed must be accessibility compliant.

Since accessibility compliant applications are text rich applications, it boosts the chances of you being found in searches. Meaningful Page title or meaningful terms helps Search Engines to better understand what the page is about It plays imp role in SEO ( Search Engine Optimization).

-By Anand Bapat

accessibility Accessible Design storage and accessibility Testing #AutomatedTesting

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