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Wondering Why Human WCAG Testing Is Necessary? Find Out More!
In today’s day in age, web developers have many crafty tools in their tool box to help with their day to day tasks and maintenance. However, an automated website accessibility testing system for AODA compliance is not one of them and we are here to tell you why!
Automated Auditing Systems Are Limited
Software is an essential tool when it comes to testing out functionality, however it really only works for binary testing. Even saying that, the best automated systems can still leave many issues undetected. Individuals with disabilities are not binary, which means there definitely is not one set of guidelines that will cover all unique individual needs. Human testing provides quality and in depth tools that address balance under all unique individual circumstances.
Human WCAG Website Auditing Overview For Compliance
Many websites are built using templates, which means global elements like headers and footers are shared. Additionally, widgets provide functions like calendars, photo galleries and lead capture through specific areas of websites. In saying this the shared elements of website templates are not what require serious auditing, what needs to be addressed are the unique pages and custom elements. Here is where your web accessibility partner and web development team can travel through your website to do a manual audit that tests functionality and accessibility.
Best Practices For Website Auditing
To ensure you get a complete picture of your website’s accessibility level, the initial step can be doing an automated test. Although it is not sufficient for accessibility as a whole, it is a good starting base of the audit report. From here, you can move into human testing, where you want to ensure your accessibility partner has a strong understanding of the front-side website code. This is the ‘presentation’ layer of your website, it is essentially what you see on your screen. This understanding will allow your web accessibility partner to address issues and get your website up to date with current web accessibility standards.
If you have one key take away from this blog, remember that automated accessibility testing can only detect about a third of the issues associated with accessibility compliance. This is why you need to reach out to a web accessibility partner you trust, to help your website become accessible.