What is ADA (Accessibility) testing? How to do it?

The full form of ADA is American Disabilities Act. This Act was made to stop discrimination and guarantees that people with disabilities have the same opportunities as everyone else have. So that means your product for us any software or application or website should have capabilities such that people having disabilities can access those without any hassle. ADA testing is also known as Accessibility Testing. People can have several types of disabilities like Vision disability, Physical disability, Hearing Issues, Cognitive disabilities, Literacy disabilities. All products should have capabilities such that most of such people can access the product. For that enough ADA testing or say Accessibility testing is required. 

ADA Testing

What is ADA Testing ? (Accessibility Testing) 

Accessibility testing is a testing to ensure that software can be used perfectly by people having disabilities. Ideally it is a part of Usability Testing only. Most of disabled people use mobile or laptop with help of speech recolonization , screen reader , screen magnifier, proper shortcuts etc. So Software test engineer should ensure that the product supports such third party software. Sometimes Operating system gives these functionalities and guidelines to support accessibility.

How to do Accessibility Testing

Accessibility testing can be done by two ways

• Manual
• With Automation tools

How to do Accessibility Testing Manually 

As discussed, Accessibility testing is to ensure if people with physical difficulties can use your product hassle-free. So you need to test that way. Some of operating systems give you option to enable accessibility for your device,  For example in Android you can go to Accessibility settings and enable settings which meant for disabled people like talk back, text to speech, magnification etc. All of them made for disabled people to access mobile device smoothly. After enabling those features start using your application. Guess for banking app how important accessibility is ! 

Same for website , try using third party software disabled people use like screen reader, accessing site without mouse etc. 

Accessibility settings in Android

What to verify in Accessibility testing ?

As a QA, the  first thing comes in mind is what all I need to test?  What scenarios to include in my test cases ? So here is the key things you need to test 

• Verify color combination is as per guideline (there are some guidelines from operating system). 
• Verify proper shortcuts for accessing menu items. 
• Verify All the buttons, labels, text boxes, drop downs have proper name and IDs so that third party software can read it correctly. 
• Verify All the images for buttons and links are understandable 
• If website or Application contains audios and videos verify deaf people can understand it. Try to test it with third party software with no speakers.
• Verify if user can change font size, can zoom the screen. 
• Verify only colors are not used to perform some task. For example green for yes and red for No. Color blind people may not identify that. 
• Try to navigate entire Application or website with talkback or screen reader. 

Automation Tools for Accessibility Testing

• Ui Automation with Selenium/Appium  - UI Automation ensures site is accessible with UI correctly. Though it will not cover most of ADA testing 
• Chrome Accessibility developer Tools - chrome extension called Accessibility developer Tools which perform page audit for your website and results accessibility issues in your website. 
• axe- coconut - web accessibility testing - It is also a chrome extension. It provides some Apis to use and set rules. 
• NVDA - web accessibility tool - It's a windows software. It is not providing any automation but helps QA to test website  like disabled people for accessibility testing. 
• ACTF aDesigner- this tool   is developed by IBM , it's free ware. It is a disability simulator that helps designers ensure that their content and applications are accessible and usable by the visually impaired. you can download it from here. 
• Wave - Web Accessibility evaluation tool - It can identify many accessibility and Web Content Accessibility Guideline (WCAG) errors, but also facilitates human evaluation of web content. You can get it from here 

These are the tools I got from different sources. I will make post on useful tools in details once I will do POC on them and start using. 

Conclusion

So like other products, for software also accessibility testing is must. Even some companies higher accessibility test specialist to test their product. So as a Quality Assurance Engineer, you must have basic knowledge on accessibility testing. It will help to make product easy to use for disabled people . (also help you to get saved from ADA laws ! ). 

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