When it comes to conducting accessibility testing for websites, a combination of automated and manual accessibility testing will give you the most comprehensive results. However, automated accessibility testing has the advantage of, well, being automated! It does not require the resources needed to conduct manual accessibility testing, and therefore plays an important role in ensuring ongoing accessibility for your digital assets.
The benefits of automated accessibility testing
As previously mentioned, automated testing can go on behind the scenes without the need for human involvement. But beyond that, an automated accessibility testing solution can also provide insights into the core issues causing accessibility failures that a human tester may miss.
Take ARC Monitoring, TPGi’s automated accessibility testing and monitoring solution. It runs scheduled scans on your digital assets and identifies accessibility barriers down to the code level, but also offers insights into overall accessibility problems. For example, you might learn that a certain template change has drastically reduced the accessibility of certain areas of your website, or a recently implemented change has caused errors to spike. Conversely, perhaps you just added accessibility testing into your CI/CD pipeline and have noticed a dramatic decrease in errors over time. An automated accessibility testing solution is a very cost-effective way to keep tabs on overall trends and document changes.
The best automated accessibility testing solutions can be utilized by a variety of roles in an organization, from the top-level C-suite executives to the QA dev team.
Combining automated accessibility testing with manual testing
An automated accessibility testing solution can also be a helpful tool during manual accessibility testing. It can give you a baseline of your website’s current state of accessibility as well as help identify ongoing errors so you can resolve them. It should never replace manual accessibility testing, but it can play a valuable ongoing role.
Accessibility testing should be an ongoing process at any forward-thinking organization. An automated solution is a valuable resource to help you stay on top of the accessibility of your digital assets. Try a free scan of your website using our automated accessibility testing and monitoring solution today!