Accessibility testing tools – Updated May 2019

February 11, 2019Technical

Here at TPGi we have a technical accessibility testing process which does not rely on the use of automated tools. The technical audit results we provide to our clients are based solely on manual testing of a web site, web application, mobile or desktop application.

Typically, but not solely, we conduct technical testing in reference to the following accessibility standards:

To aid us in our manual testing process we use a number of tools and assistive technologies, the following is not a complete list of the tools we use, but these are the tools I currently use on a daily basis:

Accessibility Testing Tools

Assistive Technology

  • JAWS (Screen Reader for windows, demo version available)
  • NVDA (Free open source Screen Reader for windows)
  • VoiceOver (Built in Screen Reader, Mac desktop and iPhone/iPod)
  • ChromeVox (screen reader for Chrome and Chrome OS)
  • Talkback (screen reader for Android)
  • Zoomtext (Screen Magnifier for windows, demo version available)
  • Dragon (speech recognition software)

More Accessibility Tools

I asked around the TPGi virtual office (Skype group chat) and people recommended some more notable and useful tools:

Notes:

  1. We do not use assistive technology in our technical testing to carry out user testing, we leave that up to actual users of assistive technology, who we work with as part of our user research and usability testing services. But as technical testers we do use assistive technology to evaluate the data we gather. Assistive technology is an essential part of the process for understanding how the accessibility information provided in user interfaces is conveyed to users.
  2. The tools listed above are only the tools I use regularly, other accessibility engineers at TPGi may use other tools.
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About Steve Faulkner

Steve was the Chief Accessibility Officer at TPGi before he left in October 2023. He joined TPGi in 2006 and was previously a Senior Web Accessibility Consultant at vision australia. Steve is a member of several groups, including the W3C Web Platforms Working Group and the W3C ARIA Working Group. He is an editor of several specifications at the W3C including ARIA in HTML and HTML Accessibility API Mappings 1.0. He also develops and maintains HTML5accessibility and the JAWS bug tracker/standards support.

Comments

roger says:
September 29, 2010 at 4:23 pm

Many thanks for this Steve, very useful as usual

Ruth Ellison says:
September 29, 2010 at 5:14 pm

Very useful list Steve – thanks for posting.
Windows inbuilt magnifier is also useful for those with no access to Zoomtext.

Dan C says:
October 1, 2010 at 3:18 pm

Nice overview, thanks for sharing. In addition, I’ve been finding that a speech input application such as NaturallySpeaking is also very valuable for testing accessibility — it is relevant to a large number of users who are often overlooked and sometimes exposes accessibility problems that are overlooked when using screen reading/magnification apps.

Going Insane says:
October 1, 2010 at 3:51 pm

Hi Guys,

I cannot find the download for inspect.exe – can someone please provide the link?

Thank you.

Steve Faulkner says:
October 1, 2010 at 4:23 pm

hi, you have to download the windows SDK, have a read of this article: Where did the accessibility tools go?.

Gary Miller says:
October 4, 2010 at 1:41 pm

Thanks for such a comprehensive list.

I use a few of those listed already and was aware of a few more, but you’ve listed several I’d not heard of before.

Thanks!

Karl says:
October 5, 2010 at 3:52 am

Good list. There are some new tools on there I’ll definitely check out.

I’m sure you’re aware of this and your copy is licensed, but just for clarity you can’t use the demo of JAWS for accessibility testing. Freedom Scientific license the demo purely for evaluation of the software, not for development purposes.

From their EULA:

“For example, these demonstration or evaluation licenses are not permitted for purposes of development and testing of JAWS scripts, applications, HTML coding, or other Web Based code.”

Steve Faulkner says:
October 5, 2010 at 3:58 am

Hi Karl, yes I am aware, I am lucky enough to have a fully licensed copy. I am not advocating using JAWS against the EULA, if people do so, it is at their own risk.

Richard Morton says:
October 5, 2010 at 3:42 pm

A pretty useful list of tools and I am with you in advocating completely manual testing.

I was going to point out about JAWS demo not being usable for this but I see that it already has been.

Adrian Roselli says:
February 12, 2019 at 5:28 pm

The Web Developer Toolbar is also available for Chrome: chrispederick.com/work/web-developer

I am also a fan of writing my own bookmarklets for testing, this way I can add focus in styles I want, reveal alt text on tweets, etc. There are many great options out there, but if you want to write your own I have a base model you can use to add your own selectors and styles: adrianroselli.com/2015/01/css-bookmarklets-for-testing-and-fixing.html

Steve Walker says:
February 22, 2019 at 5:39 pm

I noticed you left off Narrator in Windows 10. Is there a reason? The new version seems much improved. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/22798/windows-10-complete-guide-to-narrator

Roel Van Gils says:
February 23, 2019 at 4:51 pm

@Steve Walker, you wrote:

“I noticed you left off Narrator in Windows 10. Is there a reason? The new version seems much improved. ”

I think @Steve (Faulkner) left Narrator out in this list because it’s not a testing tool. See his comment:

“We do not use assistive technology in our technical testing to carry out user testing, we leave that up to actual users of assistive technology.”

I agree you don’t need the help of AT when performing a (WCAG) compliance test. However, when doing an accessibility expert reviews / walkthroughs, I think it’s high recommended to test using commonly used AT. That’s how we usually approach accessibility testing in our lab.

(And, yes, I agree that Narrator has come a long way, and can be considered a worthy alternative to Jaws or NVDA for Windows users.)

Steve Faulkner says:
February 25, 2019 at 1:56 pm

Hi Steve, we don’t generally use narrator as our clients don’t ask for it (as yet). I have used narrator when doing testing/research I suspect when Edge changes to the blink rendering engine and narrator picks up its support game for IA2 then it will be more worthwhile.