Accessibility : An Important consideration in software development

What is Accessibility?

Accessibility is a very important piece of consideration in today's market. It means the quality of being able to be reached or entered. Accessibility focuses on how a physically or mentally disabled person accesses or benefits from a site, system or application. Conformance with accessibility guidelines while developing a web page or an app is important.

What does accessibility mean for software development?

Accessibility isn't about taking away functionality or making things difficult for the software development team. It is about making sure all possible users have a way to use the system. How do information architects and web designers/developers design web pages to be compatible with assistive devices is an important aspect when thinking about accessibility.

What does accessibility mean for software testing?

Accessibility Testing checks if a product is accessible to the people having disabilities. We need to understand accessibility principles to understand why accessibility testing is important and how should it be done. Testing a software for accessibility will enable users with disabilities to access the information.

 Accessibility Principles:

There are 12 accessibility guidelines organized under 4 principles: Perceivable, Operable, Understandable and Robust.

●     Perceivable: Information and UI components must be presentable to users in ways they can perceive.

●     Operable: UI components and navigation must be operable.

●     Understandable: Information and the operation of UI must be understandable.

●     Robust: Content must be robust enough that it can be interpreted reliably by a wide variety of user agents.

Government Regulations:

Government agencies all over the world have come out with regulations, which requires that IT products to be accessible by disabled people.

Following are the legal acts by various governments -

●     United States: Americans with Disabilities Act - 1990

●     United Kingdom: Disability Discrimination Act - 1995

●     Australia: Disability Discrimination Act - 1992

●     Ireland : Disability Act of 2005

Types of Disabilities:

Disabilities can be classified into 5 major types: Visual (Color Blindness, Low Vision, Complete Blindness), Cognitive/Learning/Neurological (ADHD, Autism, Mental Health Disabilities, Spectrum disorder etc), Auditory (Deafness), Physical (Arthritis, Repetitive Stress Injury, Amputation etc) and Speech (Muteness, Dysarthria, Stuttering)

International Standards:

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) is developed through World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) process which provides a single standard for accessibility. W3C has developed recommendations for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines and User Agent Accessibility Guidelines.

WCAG 1.0:

It provided 3 priorities or levels:

 •              Priority 1 (Level A) basic requirement for some groups to be able to use web documents.

 •              Priority 2 (Level AA) better accessibility and removal of significant barriers to accessing the content.

 •              Priority 3 (Level AAA) improvements to web content accessibility.

  

WCAG 2.0:

WCAG 2.0 is a stable, referenceable technical standard.

For each guideline, testable success criteria are provided to allow WCAG 2.0 to be used where requirements and conformance testing are necessary such as in design specification, purchasing, regulation, and contractual agreements.

In order to meet the needs of different groups and different situations, three levels of conformance are defined: A (lowest), AA, and AAA (highest).  Adherence to a standard means that you meet or satisfy the 'requirements' of the standard. In WCAG 2.0 the 'requirements' are the Success Criteria. To conform to WCAG 2.0, you need to satisfy the Success Criteria, that is, there is no content which violates the Success Criteria.