Testing Tools
There are many free and premium tools that can be used to test accessibility compliance for products at all stages of development. These tools should be used in conjunction with user testing to ensure that all potential barriers are addressed.
Screen Readers
Screen readers are a text-to-speech engine used by people who are visually impaired or blind to hear spoken descriptions of the content of the screen/application. Testing with screen readers enables designers and developers to evaluate the content from their perspective. This helps to catch mistakes that are otherwise difficult to spot visually, and can help identify structural problems such as reading order, table markup and form elements.
These are the recommended free screen readers to test your designs.
NVDA
A free and open-source screen reader for the Microsoft Windows operating system.
VoiceOver
A screen reader built into Apple devices.
ChromeVox
An extension available for the Chrome web browser.
Google TalkBack
Android's built-in tool for accessibility.
Color Contrast Checkers
Objects can be difficult to discern if the background and foreground colors are not sufficiently distinct (e.g. dark blue text on black background). Testing color contrast ensures that visually impaired users are able to perceive the content on any given interface.
WebAIM Contrast Checker
Tests the foreground color against the background color.
Color Contrast Analyser
TPGi's free color contrast checker that allows you to easily determine the contrast ratio between two colors by using the eyedropper tool.
Chrome Dev Tools
The most full-featured tool for manually testing contrast within a webpage on Chrome.
Color Blindness Simulator
The Color Blindness Simulator shows what it is like to have a color vision handicap.
Automated Accessibility Checkers
Automated test applications review a product's UI for accessibility compliance. However, they cannot detect all issues, and false positives are also common. Therefore, these tools must always be used in conjunction with a manual review.
Wave Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool
A suite of evaluation tools that help make a UI more accessible.
Accessibility Insights
A general evaluation tool for the Windows, Chrome and Microsoft Edge platforms.
Xcode Accessibility Inspector
Enables you to identify the parts of your design that are not accessible.
Accessibility Scanner
When you design and develop an Android app, Accessibility Scanner can help improve the UI.
AXE Tools
Automated accessibility testing built on the World's most accurate testing library.
ANDI
Accessible Name & Description Inspector is a free testing tool used by the U.S. Government.
JavaScript Bookmarklets
Bookmarklets for Accessibility Testing use JavaScript to highlight roles, states, and properties of accessibility elements in a UI.