Testhouse

Accessibility means making your site available to as broad a scope of visitors as possible.   Accessible web design is important for businesses in terms of legal issues, ethical issues and commercial considerations:

• Businesses are required by law to ensure that their websites are accessible to as broad a range of visitors as possible.  In the UK, laws relating to web accessibility are included within the Disability Discrimination Act, 1999, which makes it clear that information services online should be accessible to disabled people.
• Having an accessible website enables you to rest assured that your website is not discriminatory to those with impairments to their sight, motor skills, hearing or cognitive abilities.
• Websites that are designed to be accessible can maximise the number of potential customers visiting your site.  In Britain there are 8.5 million disabled people with a combined spending power of £40 billion and people aged over 50, who are more likely to suffer from impairments, have a combined annual income in excess of £160 billion.

For a website to be accessible it must be coded well, be easy to navigate, and work in everyone’s browser.  The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the recognized body regarding web accessibility standards, has designed guidelines to support web accessibility which are divided into priority levels 1, 2 and 3.  Accessibility Testing is the technique of making sure that your product is accessibility compliant.

Typical test cases for accessibility will look similarly to the following examples/statements:

• We must provide equivalent alternatives to auditory and visual content
• Make sure that all functions are available via keyboard only
• We must ensure that pages are accessible even when newer technologies are not supported or are turned off
• We must ensure that text and graphics are understandable when viewed without colour
• And many more…

Accessibility testing should be viewed as a process that utilises accessibility software tools to facilitate the human review process.  Testhouse possesses an in-depth knowledge of the required manual accessibility testing techniques and automated accessibility testing tools, which we use to conduct a thorough audit to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the website or application in terms of accessibility.  Our comprehensive accessibility testing also includes checks on W3C guidelines, section 508 and Disability Discrimination Act (DDA).