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Re: Accessible automated tools

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From: Steve Green
Date: Jun 3, 2019 11:46AM

We used to use Paciello's Accessibility Toolbar a lot, but now I only use it for the Images List feature and the colour contrast analyser. Almost all our testing is done by inspection of the user interface or by using browser developer tools to inspect the code. My understanding is that browser developer tools are pretty much accessible.

Apart from that, we use a handful of bookmarklets to improve the efficiency of the testing, although the pass / fail decision is always made by a person, not the tool. Some of these will be accessible, such as the one we use to check the text spacing (SC 1.4.12). Others will be inaccessible, such as the one that uses coloured rectangles to show all the landmarks on a page. The user experience of all these is good, which is not surprising because they are all single-purpose tools.

We rarely use automated tools, and it is invariably a painful experience when we do. Much of the time is spent trying to work out what the tool is doing and why it is not giving the results we would expect, even after taking into account what a tool can and cannot do in principle.

Steve Green
Managing Director
Test Partners Ltd