This article was first published as part of Global Accessibility Awareness Day 2024 at the University of Bath.
Accessibility on the University of Bath website
In the University of Bath digital team, accessibility is a very important part of what we do. We want to make sure that our website is accessible to all and we are also required to abide by The Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018. Every new feature we introduce starts out with accessibility in mind. Before new features launch to production, we check accessibility as part of our review process. The Digital team has recently implemented scheduled accessibility testing, where we test the content and site templates to make sure that they meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.2 (WCAG 2.2). We carry out manual testing, where we manually check areas of the website against WCAG 2.2 criteria, and automated testing, where we test pages on the website using automated tools.
In this blog post, we will share some of the tools and resources that help us to carry out accessibility testing on the University of Bath website. All the resources listed are free, some may have a paid option, but we use the free options.
Automated testing tools
Automated testing tools allow you to scan a page or a group of pages for accessibility issues. For automated testing we like to use a selection of different tools as we have found that some tools pick up on issues that others don’t. For manual testing we use a browser plugin to enhance our manual tests.
Silktide plugin
Silktide is an automated testing plugin that is available for Google Chrome. We like to run it alongside our manual accessibility tests, as we particularly like how it explains any code-related accessibility issues in layman's terms. This is useful as our accessibility testing is carried out by all of the team, not just Front-end Developers. It runs pages against WCAG 2.0, 2.1, and 2.2 and has lots of useful tools such as:
- disability simulation (dyslexia, impaired vision, colour blindness)
- inbuilt screen reader
- colour contrast checker
- alt text checker
- focus order and landmark highlighting
- desktop, tablet, and mobile views
WAVE
WAVE (web accessibility evaluation tool) is an automated browser extension which is available for Chrome, Firefox, and Microsoft Edge. The tool also has a web version which you can use without having to install anything, which is useful if your organisation restricts the installation of browser extensions. It is developed by WebAIM at Utah State University. We use WAVE as part of our automated testing. It allows you to scan a page to check for any accessibility issues against WCAG 2.2. It also allows you to
- see a summary of accessibility issues
- visually see the tab order of a page
- view references about accessibility issue
- see an outline of the structure of the page
- colour contrast tool
ARC Toolkit
Arc Toolkit is an automated testing tool developed by TPGi. Like the plugins above, it allows you to test sites against WCAG 2.2 criteria. It is available as a Google Chrome browser extension and runs from the Chrome Developer console. ARC Toolkit allows you to filter your automated accessibility test by category. It also allows you to highlight specific types of elements on the page, such as images and their ALT text or headings on a page.
AXE
Axe is an automated testing tool developed by Deque. It is available for Chrome, Edge and Firefox and works from the developer console of each browser. There is a paid version of this tool, and many of the features are locked behind a subscription, however, the free version allows you to carry out a scan of the page using WCAG 2.1 criteria.
W3 Validator
WCAG previously had a criterion ‘Parsing SC 4.1.1’, which was in place due to the issues that incorrect code (e.g. unclosed tags) would cause with assistive technology. The W3 Validator is a great tool for checking for HTML validation issues. Due to this no longer being a problem, this criterion was removed with the introduction of WCAG 2.2.
We still find it useful to run the W3 Validation Tool against code when we conduct automated testing, as it can sometimes pick up issues with our templates, for example duplicate heading types or unclosed tags which could cause further bugs.
Screen readers
When carrying out manual accessibility testing the team uses a range of screen readers on different operating systems and types of devices to ensure our pages work correctly on these assistive technologies.
- Windows Narrator – built in screen reader for Windows 10 & 11
- VoiceOver – built in screen reader for macOS and IOS
- Talkback – built in Android screen reader
- NVDA – free screen reader for Windows
Human eye / manual tests
While we believe the tools we use are effective, they are no substitute for the human eye. There are things that may get missed out when using automated tools and things that are not issues can often be picked up. To carry out manual testing, we use our own checklist, which is put together from the WCAG 2.2 guidelines. Read more about our scheduled accessibility tests.
Useful resources
Here is a short list of resources that we find useful to keep us up to date with the latest accessibility news:
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