Imagine trying to make a classic American cheeseburger without knowing how it tastes or smells. You just followed the instructions from a pictureless cooking book. Can you ensure that everyone will love the dish despite their dietary preferences? Probably not. Accessibility testing without real users is similar to this scenario. Even if you use the best automated tools available at your disposal, you still need to get it tested by an accessibility specialist. The automated tools are just like different kitchen equipment needed for a dish. Therefore, If you do it without an expert’s supervision, most people may not like it. In this blog, we will help you understand why automated accessibility testing with real users is crucial in building a truly inclusive digital space.
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What is Accessibility Testing?
Accessibility testing ensures that digital products such as websites and mobile apps are usable by people with disabilities. It involves evaluating interfaces against standards such as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) to identify and remove barriers, with the goal of creating inclusive, user-friendly experiences for all.
Automated accessibility testing tools have gained popularity and rightly so. They’re quick, easy to integrate, and can flag a range of common issues without needing much human input. However, some teams opt for manual audits instead, where accessibility specialists conduct a meticulous review of a website’s code and functionality. While this approach is highly thorough and often uncovers complex issues that automation might miss, it can be both time-consuming and costly. Moreover, it often results in a lengthy list of necessary fixes, which can overwhelm development teams if not properly prioritized. Let’s delve deeper.
Types of Accessibility Testing that are difficult to automate
While automated accessibility tools are valuable for quickly identifying technical issues, they fall short when it comes to evaluating the actual user experience. Many aspects of accessibility are deeply tied to human understanding, context, and perception; areas where automation struggles. Here are some key examples:
- Automation can’t assess how well someone understands language or how much mental effort it takes to navigate.
- Meaningful Alt Text: Automated systems can’t judge if the alt text is correct, short, and useful.
- Order of Logical Focus: Automation can find keyboard traps or missing focus indicators, but it often fails to evaluate whether the tab order makes sense for users navigating without a mouse.
- Effectiveness of instructions and error messages: Tools can flag missing form labels, but they can’t determine how good the error feedback is.
- Real-World Context and Distractions: Automated testing occurs in ideal conditions, ignoring the complexity of real-life usage.
- Subjective Experience: Automation should try to make the user experience pleasant, efficient, and empowering.
Why Automated Testing Alone won’t Solve Web Accessibility?
Automated accessibility tools are fast and efficient, but relying on them exclusively can create blind spots that impact real users. These tools are best used as part of a broader strategy and not as a complete solution. Here are some critical limitations to keep in mind:
- The False Sense of Security Trap: A “100% pass” from an automated checker is very dangerous. It makes teams think the job is done, but real-time users may still have major usability problems that can go unnoticed. You might be legally compliant “on paper,” but in real life, you may fall short.
- The Context Blind Spot: Automation has a hard time with context. A complicated data visualization might have alt text, but the tool can’t figure out whether that text is meaningful to a blind person.
- Can not Test Difficult Interactions: Automated tools often fail when dealing with dynamic content, single-page applications (SPAs), custom widgets, and advanced form behaviors.
- Not knowing “Why”: While automation can flag what’s broken, it rarely explains why it matters or how to fix it effectively.
Combining both Automated tools and user testing
Strategic Usage of Automated tools
Automated accessibility tools are best used as part of your development workflow and not as a one-time solution. Here’s how to make the most of them:
- Integrate into Development Pipelines: Use tools like Lighthouse, axe-core, or Accessibility Insights to automatically flag common issues such as missing alt text, color contrast problems, and missing form labels.
- Quickly Scan Large Sections of a Site: Automation enables you to rapidly identify technical accessibility issues across large websites or entire product ecosystems.
- Enable Regression Testing: Run automated checks regularly to catch accessibility regressions when new code is deployed, ensuring that past issues don’t reappear.
- Establish Benchmarks: Track accessibility scores over time to measure progress and identify patterns. Use these metrics to guide improvements and demonstrate accountability.
Testing by real users to find out core issues
While automation helps with compliance, only real users can reveal how usable and accessible your product truly is. Prioritize testing with people who use assistive technologies daily.
Include people with disabilities (visual, auditory, motor, cognitive) and people who use assistive technologies on a regular basis. Ask participants to complete real life tasks while you observe how easily they navigate, interact, and complete workflows. Prioritize qualitative feedback from these users–focusing on what they think, what frustrates them, what they suggest, and what they like. It is important to know the context, including their unique situations and the problems they face in real life.
Key Areas to Observe:
- Ease of navigation and clarity of layout
- Logical order of content and focus
- Effectiveness of alternative formats (e.g. alt text, transcripts)
- Compatibility with assistive technologies
- Cognitive load and emotional response
- Overall satisfaction and confidence using the interface
Blending Automation testing with user testing
Combining automated tools with real user feedback creates a more holistic and effective accessibility strategy:
- Automation gets rid of repetitive work: Automation takes care of the routine tasks thus giving the human testers more time to find resources to identify complicated issues without much pressure of deadlines.
- Humans Give Automation Results Meaning: Humans can understand the accessibility issue according to the context and work on an accessible and inclusive creative solution.
- People Find Problems What Automation Misses:Real users will point out confusing navigation, an illogical order of focus, unclear instructions, or poorly described images that the automation tool misses.
- Better solutions come from combining insights:Step one is to fix an automated error, like adding a form label that is missing. Watching a user have trouble with the clarity of that label or the error messages leads to a better overall solution.
- Continuous Feedback Loop: Automation can be used for gatekeeping while the website is being developed. Testing with users regularly and using their feedback to fix issues will greatly improve the accessibility of your website. Additionally, it will help you to develop a faster way to add new elements on your website.
Getting started: Accessibility testing
Here’s a simple framework to begin building accessibility into your workflow:
- Use automation tools like Lighthouse, AAC for initial audits.
- Integrate real users throughout the design phase for feedback.
- Conduct focused tests during the development phase.
- Schedule periodic testing post-launch to catch regressions and new issues.
- Work with accessibility experts to get expert reviews and recruit diverse participants, and use automated reports and feedback from real users to set priorities for fixes.
Conclusion
Automated tools are strong and helpful partners. They provide the basic technical needs–speed, scale, and reliability. It is a strong scaffolding but people with disabilities are the ones who design and build things and test them. They have the lived experience, the nuanced understanding, and a human point of view that reveals if the bridge is really safe, easy to cross, and welcoming for everyone who needs to cross it.
Investing in both is not only the best thing to do but it is the only way to make digital experiences that are truly accessible, usable, and empowering. Do not just measure the ingredients, prepare the burger, share it, and enjoy how happy it makes everyone at the table. Put together the accuracy of the scale with the knowledge of the taste-tester. That is how you really include everyone in the digital world. Contact us today to deepen your understanding of this blend and test your website.
