Three accessibility tools to test your website today
- Carol Saldanha
- 4 hours ago
- 4 min read
If your business is online, accessibility should be at the centre of any discussion with content writers and web designers. Why? Because the internet is for everyone. Plus, accessibility can help your business grow.
If you’d like to see how your website stacks up against accessibility standards and experience how people navigate it, keep reading for some accessibility tool recommendations.
But before we dive in, let’s start with some basic definitions.
What is web accessibility?
Web accessibility is the practice of making digital experiences accessible to all. If your content is accessible, this means:
it meets technical standards and guidelines
people can successfully and equitably interact with your website or app, whether they have a permanent or temporary impairment or disability.
What are accessibility guidelines?
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 outlines levels of accessibility standards for digital content. They’re split into different levels of standards (A, AA, and AAA). Following these guidelines will also often make web content more usable to users in general.
If reading these guidelines feels somewhat overwhelming, we’ve already broken down the guidelines to help you in your quest for accessible content.
What are some types of accessibility?
To create websites with more access options for different disabilities or assistive technologies, you have to consider the different lenses of disability, such as:
● visual (like blindness, colour blindness)
● mobility (for example, muscle control, arthritis, functional movement disorders)
● auditory (hearing loss, auditory processing disorder)
● seizure risk (for example, those with photosensitive epilepsy)
● cognitive and learning (dyslexia, processing disorders, impaired memory)
Some tools will help you audit and test your website for certain disabilities, while others will test it for a range of them.
What tools can I use to test my website for accessibility?
Funkify
What it does
I first heard about this Chrome extension on the Vision Australia website. This tool won’t rate your website's accessibility, but it will help analyse basic accessibility elements, like:
● heading tags
● colour contrast
● alt-text.
The best thing about this tool is that it simulates different visual, motor and cognitive conditions, like:
● blurry vision
● dyslexia
● lowered vision and trembling hands.
When and why use it
Funkify’s simulations offer a glimpse into the lived experience of people with different conditions. It’s a great empathy exercise that offers guidance on creating considerate content.
Pros
Easy to install and use
The free version is quite comprehensive
It shares some great stats about each of the disabilities it simulates
The paid version allows you to create your own filters
Accessible pricing (paid version starts at $4.99 a month).
Cons
The website doesn’t have a lot of information about the exact capabilities of the paid version
It doesn’t rate your website and doesn't generate a report (at least not in the free version).
WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools
What it does
Wave is an institution when it comes to accessibility testing tools. It’s been helping website owners check accessibility compliance since 2001. Wave organises its findings into six categories, and it gives you a detailed on-screen report in just a few seconds. It offers both a web version and browser extensions.
When and why use it
When you want a detailed, quick assessment of some potential web accessibility issues on your website in real-time.
Pros
Comprehensive
Generates an accessibility report
Has browser extensions and web-based versions
Highlights potential accessibility issues and provides explanations for each.
Cons
Only assess one page at a time
Pages need to be live
No live chat or support email
Can’t export the accessibility report.
WebAIM Contrast Checker
What it does
This is an easy-to-use, free tool that helps evaluate colour contrast ratios in web design to ensure text is readable by all users, including those with low vision or colour vision. Web Accessibility in Mind (WebAIM) is hosted by Utah State University in the USA.
When and why use it
Enter the colour code numbers, or use the colour picker, to check whether the funky colour combination you’re using on your website passes the accessibility test. Building a new page? Test your colour choices before they go live.
But be mindful that a colour combo might pass in a header but fail when it's used for body text. So good thing your contrast is assessed for normal and large text.
Pros
The tool is simple and easy to use
It gives you samples of what normal-sized and large-sized text looks like
It assesses contrast according to two WGAC levels (AA and AAA). Adhering to AA is best practice for everyone, and mandatory for government sites.
Cons
The Contrast Checker is specific to evaluating colour contrast ratios only. It doesn’t offer additional accessibility evaluations, like font size or font style
It doesn’t simulate colour vision deficiency, which can impact colour choices and end-user accessibility (but if your page is live, you can try Funkify).
Bonus resource
WebAIM isn’t just a colour checker – it has other tools and resources. How about testing your website’s keyboard accessibility? Many people with motor disabilities or vision impairments rely on a keyboard.
This keyboard accessibility article includes a cheatsheet for testing. It lists:
the most common online interactions
the standard keystrokes for each interaction
additional information to consider during testing.
Challenge yourself to interact with your website only using a keyboard.
What should I do next?
Designing for accessibility takes time and can’t be done overnight. But testing your website to see what you’re doing well and where you need improvement is a great first step.
Start with quick wins such as:
heading structure
metadata
alt text for your images
colour contrast.
And if you need some help writing content that is laser-focused on accessibility, talk to our team. Let’s make your site more inclusive together.
Image credits: Illustration by pch.vector on Freepik.
