Accessibility is the practice of making a website usable by anyone regardless of their ability. With millions depending on an assistive technology to go online, a website and application have to be accessible to all people, including those with disabilities. But meeting this objective calls for comprehensive testing to make sure that your website meets the various standards set that define accessibility.
Fortunately, Chrome extensions have grown to become powerful tools for helping with this process, affording developers and testers the opportunity to identify and fix accessibility issues right from their browser. The blog looks at how one can really raise the bar of accessibility testing with Chrome extensions and the best practices to follow.
Why Accessibility Testing Matters
Before delving deep into Chrome extensions, it needs to be understood why accessibility testing is an activity that demands prime importance. Generally speaking, accessibility ensures that all people, irrespective of disabilities related to visual and hearing impairments, mobility, or cognitive limitations, may gain equal access to and interact comfortably with websites and applications.
Following are the major reasons why accessibility testing has become important:
- Legal Policy: Most countries have legislation and regulations that demand the accessibility of websites, such as the ADA in the United States. Inaccessible websites may invite legal action and penalties due to non-compliance with legislation.
- Inclusive Design: Accessibility testing will make sure your website is designed inclusively. Not only does this help users with disabilities, but it also contributes to improving the general user experience.
- Better SEO: Accessible websites tend to perform better in search engines because they follow the best practices of HTML semantics and structure, thus making life easier for both users and website visibility.
- Broader Reach: In ensuring access, you open up your audience to include people with disabilities that rely on assistive technologies, hence increasing reach for your content or product.
Challenges of Testing for Accessibility
Accessibility testing becomes an elusive task because of so many different areas to be tested, from keyboard navigation to screen reader compatibility, from color contrast to many other things. At the same time, it requires accessibility knowledge-standards like WCAG, which in turn may be quite tricky and time-consuming to cover.
Some of the key challenges are:
- Problems Identification: Serious accessibility issues, such as screen readers and keyboard navigation, are difficult to reveal without the proper tools.
- Comprehensive Testing: Then comes testing on different browsers and devices, which can be painful given the extent of manual and automated testing.
- Staying up to date: Keeping knowledge up to date is also a relevant activity in itself, as standards and best practices get updated continuously.
How Can Chrome Extensions Help?
Extensions for Chrome make it easier and more convenient to perform accessibility testing. Such tools integrate directly into your browser and enable you to identify, analyze, and repair real-time accessibility issues. In the next section, we’ll be discussing a number of the most useful Chrome extensions for accessibility testing, considering their feature set and how those can help in making the test process better.
1. WAVE – Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool
WAVE is one of the most used Chrome browser extensions in the field of accessibility testing. From WebAIM-Web Accessibility In Mind, WAVE gives a graphical representation of all the accessibility issues directly on your web page. This extension can help you find any errors, warnings, and features regarding accessibility by making the spotting and fixing of problems much easier.
- Features: WAVE highlights the accessibility barriers directly on the page, showing where in a document the problems are occurring. It also gives you detailed information for each error or warning regarding suggestions for repair. And WAVE gives you a summary about the accessibility of a page, so you get at a glance an idea about the status of a page accessibility.
- How to Use: With the WAVE extension installed, click the icon from within your Chrome toolbar and the tool will scan the current web page. Issues will be color-coded with icons to easily identify what needs to be fixed and in what order.
- Best For: WAVE is designed for developers and testers who want to find accessibility issues quickly and easily without having to leave their browser. This tool is very helpful in finding issues related but not limited to HTML structure, color contrast, and ARIA implementation.
2. Axe Accessibility Checker
Another one of the highly used accessibility testing tools is Axe, which has a high degree of reliability for accuracy. Axe has been developed by Deque Systems to support developers and testers in the early development phase by finding and fixing accessibility issues as early as possible.
- Features: It provides highly detailed reports of the issues in accessibility, including a seriousness level and recommendations for fixes. Integrates well into workflows from development onwards; you’re testing the accessibility of a website or web application right as you’re doing your other development testing. It’s built upon an open-source, industry-leading accessibility engine called Axe-core.
- How to Use: After installing the Chrome extension for Axe, open the developer tools panel in Chrome and select the tab called “Axe”. There, you can run an accessibility scan of the currently opened page, which will give you a list of issues with detailed information about how to fix them.
- Best For: Axe is for developers who want a solid, full-featured tool that will easily fit into an existing workflow. It is particularly useful for catching problems early in the development process to reduce costs and effort when having to make fixes later.
3. Lighthouse
Lighthouse is an open-sourced tool provided by Google for running audits regarding performance, accessibility, progressive web apps, SEO, and more. Although Accessibility is not the sole purpose of Lighthouse, this Accessibility Audit is one of its strong features that helps developers make sure their website is accessible to each and every user.
- Features Lighthouse gives, in detail, an accessibility score, listing the issues alongside suggestions for improvement. Links to relevant documentation are there, helping one understand and hence fix the issues more easily. Lighthouse can be run directly from Chrome developer tools or as a standalone tool.
- How to Use: In Chrome, open the developer tools, select the tab called “Lighthouse”, click Options and check the Accessibility audit option. Run Lighthouse with default options on a page.
- Best for: Lighthouse is an excellent solution for the developers who want to conduct an in-depth audit for a website – as in, not just accessibility but also performance and SEO. It’s really useful for showing all kinds of issues and giving active insights into how to improve.
4. Accessibility Insights for Web
Accessibility Insights is an extension in Chrome from Microsoft that supports developers in ensuring that their websites and applications are as per the accessibility standards. The tool eases early detection of most accessibility issues, giving suggestions on how to fix such bugs.
- Features: Both fast and complete testing options in one tool. FastPass: A light scan to show the common problem areas of the page. Assessment: Deeper, multi-faceted insights. Tab Stops: To visually show the tab order on a page for ensuring keyboard navigation logical and accessible.
- How to Use: The Accessibility Insights extension can be installed and the icon opened through your Chrome toolbar. You can run a FastPass scan for quick results or do a more detailed assessment. The tool will give you an indication of the issues and some suggestions for fixing them.
- Best for: Accessibility Insights is an excellent solution for developers and testers who do quick scans or more in-depth assessments. It is particularly fit for checking keyboard navigation and tab order for your page to be logical and user-friendly.
5. Siteimprove Accessibility Checker
It is a full web governance tool; among its key features is accessibility testing. Siteimprove Chrome Extension – Accessibility Checker allows you to check the accessibility of your website directly in your browser.
- Features: Detailed report about the problems concerning accessibility: WCAG conformity, best practices and recommendations on how to fix the problem. The overall accessibility score of a page helps you to manage priorities.
- How to Use: Once you have installed the Siteimprove extension, simply click the icon in your Chrome toolbar to run an accessibility check of any webpage. The tool will crawl the current page and then give you a report with a list of issues, along with recommendations.
- Best for: Siteimprove would work perfectly for organizations that need an all-around web governance solution, inclusive of accessibility testing. The Chrome extension is fabulous for fast finding and fixing issues right in the browser.
6. Accessibility DevTools Chrome Extension
LambdaTest’s Accessibility DevTools extension is a strong add-on designed for the detection and fixation of issues in accessibility testing. LambdaTest is a leading name in cross-browser testing, and this extension takes that forward with an added layer of convenience by performing accessibility testing right from within the Chrome browser. This tool is designed to show issues related to WCAG compliance and makes the work of developers and testers much easier in ensuring that their websites are accessible to every user.
- Features: Accessibility DevTools runs comprehensive and verbose audits of web pages against color contrast, ARIA attributes, HTML semantics, and many others. Every issue that it encounters comes with a detailed description and recommendations on how to eliminate it. With perfect integration with the LambdaTest platform, you will be able to create fixes and test them on more than 5,000 different browser versions and operating systems.
- How to Use: With the Accessibility DevTools extension installed, click the icon that now lives in your Chrome toolbar to scan the current page. The Accessibility DevTools will give you a report of the accessibility issues it has found, along with suggestions on how to fix them. Optionally, link the tool up with your LambdaTest account and do cross-browser tests to verify fixes.
- Best for: This extension fits perfectly in teams already performing cross-browser testing on LambdaTest and looking to add a strong layer of testing for accessibility. This will be particularly useful in finding and fixing WCAG compliance issues, with your website needing to keep up with the latest in accessibility standards.
Best Practices in Using Chrome Extensions in Accessibility Testing
While Chrome extensions are indeed powerful tools for enhancing accessibility testing, it is important to follow the best practices in using them. Here are some good ones to note:
1. Manual and Automated Testing
While Chrome extensions can automate many aspects of testing accessibility, this should not be a replacement for all manual testing. Certain issues, such as the usability of a website with a screen reader or the effectiveness of keyboard navigation, can’t be tested without manual testing to ensure a good user experience.
2. Test on Different Browsers and Devices
While Chrome extensions exist for convenience, you are going to want to test your website across multiple browsers on multiple devices to ensure any person can access it. You can do this by using LambdaTest or doing cross-browser testing.
3. Focus on Critical Issues
This makes it very overwhelming when testing accessibility using Chrome extensions. Always prioritize critical issues that affect the usability of your website to users with disabilities and tackle those first.
4. Keep Up with Accessibility Standards
Accessibility standards, such as WCAG, are always changing. Stay current on recent updates and best practices, and integrate those into your testing.
5. Document and Share Findings
Document the findings after performing accessibility testing. This helps make sure issues are handled and that in the development process, accessibility concerns are not taken lightly.
Conclusion
One of the strongest ways to ensure your website or application is usable by everyone, regardless of ability, is with accessibility testing enhancements via Chrome extensions. WAVE, Axe, Lighthouse, Accessibility Insights, and Siteimprove are among the popular tools that provide capabilities for ease in the identification and fixing of accessibility issues directly within your browser. By integrating these with manual testing and best practices, you will be well on your way to creating a more inclusive and user-friendly web for one and all.
With accessibility continuing to be an important aspect for the digital world, integrating these extensions into your test processes will help meet your legal requirements, improve the overall user experience, and widen your audience base. These tools empower each-one-developer, tester, and designer-to make your website more accessible and inclusive, so that all may enjoy your content and benefit from it.
