WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Screen reader accessible Web Testing Tools

for

From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: Dec 23, 2019 7:18AM

Despite what we want to think, is there's sadly no guarantee that an
accessibility tool is accessible.
Even when they are they typically never come with documentation for a
screen reader user and they sometimes depend on accessible
environments like the browser developer tools.
For instance, to run the Axe plug-in for Chrome you have to jump
through a few hoops:
1. Open the Chrome dev tools (ctrl-shift-i)
2. From the top of the screen, arrow down to the tabs at the top
(html, CSS, etc.)
3. Try to activate the Axe tab, pressing ctrl-] and arrow back until
you find the Axe tab (Chrome dev tools have a series of keyboard
accessibility issues, including not being able to use arrow keys to
navigate between tabs), if Axe is a new addition ctrl-[[ will open the
most recent one, so that could be a shortcut.

4. Look for the "Analyze" button once the Axe tab is activated

Wave has a keyboard shortcut so it can be run directly from the
webpage in the browser, but I've had some issues switching between the
Wave tabs, though their overlay approach is easy and intuitive to
understand for a screen reader user (good job, Wave!).

Firebug is dead, I think, but Firefox dev tools work more or less like
Firebug did with a screen reader so my instructions on
http://www.bats.fyi are mostly relevant still.
Master Marco Zehe also has excellent instrructions, though I admit to
being too lazy to Google them right now.

Chrome dev tools are decent but not fully accessible and require
workarounds, I need to do a write up on how to use them but it starts
with shift-f10 and selecting "inspect element" to get to the current
element in the DOM tree, then use the context menu for things like
copy HTML, cut/paste node, add attribute etc.
The editor is not accessible at all, you must copy code to an external
edit and then paste the modified HTML back into the DOM.

You would think that accessibility tools are accessible out of the
box, that the website of accessibility vendors come with a perfect, or
near-perfect score with common automated accessibility checking tools.
This is far from a given, sadly.
Some vendors do well, but many vendors don't seem to bother (and
subsequently they don't get any business from me).


On 12/23/19, Marissa Sapega < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> The Paciello Group offers a free Chrome extension, ARC Toolkit, which is
> great for manual reviews:
> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/arc-toolkit/chdkkkccnlfncngelccgbgfmjebmkmce?hl=en
>
> Thank you,
>
> Marissa
>
> On 12/23/19, 3:00 AM, "WebAIM-Forum on behalf of glen walker"
> < <EMAIL REMOVED> on behalf of <EMAIL REMOVED> >
> wrote:
>
> There's also a huge list of tools on the W3.org website -
> https://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/tools/
> > > > >
>
> > > > >


--
Work hard. Have fun. Make history.