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Re: testing for keyboard accessibility

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From: Tim Harshbarger
Date: Sep 24, 2012 2:52PM

Those are definitely excellent points.

I guess what I was trying to get across is that, if you are documenting accessibility items in your design specifications, you may be able to automate some testing. While you can't automate a test for whether or not an alt attribute is meaningful, you could automate a test to determine if logo.gif has the alt text of "Home" when it is used as a link if that is what you designate in your design specifications.

Technically, the test wouldn't validate whether or not the item conformed to SC 1.1.1. However, if you validate that in the QC for your design specifications, then you can verify that the application conforms to your design spec which conforms to whatever standard you are using.

It isn't the same as being able to feed a tool an URL and get a report, but it is a way to potentially automate testing to a greater degree. Consider it sort of a test driven development approach to accessibility--for what it is worth.