This page contains a list of various tools and use cases for those tools. Your milage may vary.
Broad-spectrum Manual testing
Browsers. Whatever your organization supports. Old and new versions if possible.
After browsers, there’s these plugins and bookmarklets:
- Tota11y – an accessibility visualization toolkit by the folks at Khan Academy
- HTML 5 Outliner produces an outline of an HTML document to check for headings that are structured poorly.
- Chrome High Contrast plug-in – allows you to use Chrome in a high-contrast mode. (Note: this isn’t the same as the operating system’s high contrast mode.)
- ANDI testing tool by the US Social Security Administration. Recommended for testing Are the names used on the page unique? and may be useful for other tests as well.
Broad-spectrum Automated Testing
- Lighthouse by Google provides accessibility testing that can be run in the browser, in the console, or in Node.
- See Google’s Lighthouse in Chrome instructions for running accessibility tests in the browser.
- Axe Linter by Deque provides automated source code accessibility checking.
- Jaws Inspect isn’t a fully automated solution for screen reader testing, but it gets us closer to automation.
Screen Readers
- NVDA (Non-Visual Desktop Access) for Windows
- Download page – this is free software
- NVDA User guide
- Symbol text descriptions in NVDA
- VoiceOver for Mac (comes preinstalled)
- ORCA for Linux
- Assistiv Labs – A website you can visit that will run virtual machines with various different screen readers so that you can test across screen readers and operating systems without creating your own testing lab.
- JAWS for Windows
- Setting up a screen reader testing environment on your computer
Braille Viewers
- JAWS, NVDA, and VoiceOver Braille Viewers – If you don’t have a Braille display, you can visualize what one looks like using these screen readers. This doesn’t replace testing with proper equipment. It’s better than having no understanding of a Braille viewer.
Zoom for Low Vision
- ZoomText – Windows software for zooming, screen color, mouse, cursor, and more.
- MAGic – Windows software for zooming, screen color, mouse, cursor, and more.
Depending on the version installed, these applications may have basic screen reader features as well.
Color Contrast Testers
These testers use the current WCAG 2.1 and lower formulas for determining if a color matches the 3:1 or 4.5:1 contrast ratios outlined in the guidelines.
- WebAIM Contrast Checker — This is my favorite because it gives plenty of detail and is easy to use.
APCA Contrast Testers
These testers use the Advanced Perception of Color Algorithm to determine if colors pass. Note that APCA is still being tweaked and won’t be official until at least WCAG 3.0.
Theming Overrides
So you’ve themed your website, but it’s not working for your customers. Sometimes they complain. Sometimes they take matters into their own hands. The following pieces of software provide users the ability to re-theme your site. They’re listed here because I’ve already had an experience where a user overrode our corporate colors due to low vision concerns then called us when we unknowingly broke their (technically unsupported) plugin.
- ZoomText offers theming overrides.
Dark reader:
- Dark Reader for Chrome
- Dark Reader for Firefox
- Dark Reader for Safari – $5 on the App Store.