🔧 Tools for testing the accessibility (ARIA, WCAG, A11y, Read screen and more...)
Does anyone know any? Please, Don't suggest Lighthouse
8 Replies
a screen reader, blindfolds and go at it
you have the narrator on windows
but there is also nvda (https://www.nvaccess.org/download/)
you can click on the accessibility icon on google chrome, or the accessibility tab on firefox, but those just give a tree of what may be sent to the screen reader
and the way they work and read things can be very different than you expect
there's no automated tool to test a11y, because a11y is as much spec compliance as it is UX and there's no other way of making sure something is accessible than to use is as an Accessibility Tool user would
yup, just blindfolds, screen reader on, no mouse and good luck!
would slightly push back on the blindfold, as learning how a screen reader works to begin with is already pretty difficult IMO. Would personally avoid blindfolding yourself while you try and learn how to get the reader to read the text on your screen, and learning how to navigate with one without a mouse
(my experience is barely NVDA and Windows Narrator. Recently its been trying to actually truly learn Orca and TalkBack)
Otherwise, perhaps axe DevTools and WAVE may be of use?
as someone who did that recently, while having never used a screenreader before, i can tell you that it isnt as hard or easy as you imagine
and that is how you trully feel what is happening
and trully embody how someone would use it
thats how i made a search accessible, which was a royal pain
im not a super human, so, if i can do it then o.p. can do it too
What reader are you using?
i was using the narrator
nvda is too much for me, specially when i had -1 weeks to implement the changes
This one is good too in addition to wave / axe / ace: https://silktide.com/toolbar/
has pretty good ui, allows to emulate screen reader but displaying narration as text.
Testing on real narrators would be better though as those have their own behaviour and bugs.