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Re: Testing SC 1.4.12 in multiple browsers

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From: Steve Green
Date: Sep 23, 2021 10:00AM

While agreeing with Glen, I would take a slightly harder line. The WCAG success criteria do not mention the behaviour with screen readers or any other assistive technology. You do not need to use any assistive technologies at all when doing a WCAG audit. In just about every case, your pass / fail decision MUST be based on manual inspection of the code and user interface. Tools and assistive technologies can provide useful support, but they are often wrong or misleading.

Some time ago, I went through all the WCAG success criteria to determine which ones need to be tested with more than one browser. Glen has already mentioned some for which that would not be necessary. I reckon that of the 50 level AA success criteria, only these 7 need to be tested with multiple browsers as a matter of routine:

SC 2.1.1: Keyboard Navigation (level A)
SC 2.1.2: No Keyboard Trap (level A)
SC 2.4.1: Bypass Blocks (level A)
SC 2.4.3: Focus Order (level A)
SC 1.4.4: Resize Text (level AA)
SC 1.4.10: Reflow (level AA)
SC 1.4.11: Non-text Contrast (level AA)

Depending on how the website is coded, it may be necessary to test other success criteria with multiple browsers. That's usually an indication that the code is pretty horrid.

It might even be safe to drop SC 2.4.1 (Bypass Blocks) from that list. Some browsers used to scroll the page but not move the focus position when in-page links were operated, but I don't know if that is still true.

I don't recall getting different results from different browsers with any of the other 43 success criteria, so I would be very interested to hear if anyone else has. Even if there are a few more, anyone who is testing all 50 in multiple browsers is wasting an awful lot of time.

Note that I am not arguing against testing with assistive technologies. It's just that doing so constitutes an "accessibility test", which can be anything you want it to be, not an audit for WCAG conformance, which has a defined scope.

Steve Green
Managing Director
Test Partners Ltd