WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Multilingual Web Accessibility Testing Approach

for

From: glen walker
Date: Aug 10, 2023 12:22PM


First off, keep in mind that "foreign language" is relative to the tester.
Just because a site is not in English doesn't mean it's a foreign language.
I know that's just a nit-pick but this forum is international so there are
lots of native languages.

Secondly, you asked for the "best approach" for testing a website/app that
is in a language not native to the tester. The best approach is to use a
tester that is a native language speaker. The second best approach is to
use a tester that uses that language as a second (or third) language that
they understand.

If no one is available that understands that language, then using a
translator is about all you can do. I've done this before but before I
accepted the project, I made sure the client knew all the caveats of
testing without knowing the language and that the testing takes longer (and
thus more expensive).

Assuming the translation is decent (such as using Chrome and
auto-translate, which I'm not claiming is "decent" but it's a handy
feature), then you *might* be able to test whether text is "descriptive" as
it pertains to 1.1.1, 2.4.2, 2.4.6, etc.

Of course, there is testing that can be done regardless of the language,
such as contrast, use of color, resize text, focus visible.

So it's possible.


On Thu, Aug 10, 2023 at 7:06 AM Praful Sojitra <
<EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> Hi,
>
> What will the best approach to test the foreign language (non-English) web
> application/websites? Using Google translator will be wise? How to handle
> content which are not translated by Google translator like video, images
> etc.
>
> Any help will be appreciated.
>
> Thank you,
> Praful
>
> > > > >