Mobile Accessibility testing is quite similar to desktop accessibility testing. There will be a slight difference in the approach of mobile accessibility testing. Accessibility testing is more like software testing, which makes sure the application can be accessed easily by the person with disabilities like color blindness, old age and hearing issues. For operating the software product, disable people will use assistive technology.
It is to be estimated that more than 85% of the screen readers are mobile users. Besides the blind users, many users require accessibility approach like users suffering from arthritis, users using small screen, partially sighted users, movability of finger issue, colorblindness and users suffering from cognitive problems and dyslexia.
Need for Mobile Accessibility Testing:
Most of the disabled readers often use a wireless keyboard for accessing the mobile sites. It doesn't specify that we need a keyboard for testing the mobile site. The need for additional hardware would require many mobile devices with different operating systems and hardware enhancements. This is because the hardware will provide the same accessibility problems and the operating system will have a different version.
There will be the same issue with the hardware as well. There will be variation from device to device screen issues. For mobile Accessibility testing, you will surely need an Android and IoS device.
Types of Accessibility tools:
Good knowledge of tools will be required before performing the Accessibility testing
- Inbuilt Accessibility Options:
There are many inbuilt accessibility options in the mobiles. Most of them are not required like zooming option. We can perform zooming using normal actions.
- HTML Validator:
HTML validators can be used to perform the mobile website testing on desktop. It is used to ensuring the correctness of the semantics in the website code.
- Analyzing Color Ratio:
It is to ensure that the user can read with the color contrast irrespective of the issued faced by the user. This can be tackled by sending a screenshot of the mobile to the desktop and checking the contrast between them.
- Screen Readers:
Screen Readers will help to identify the issues and highlight the bad practice. But the usage of screen readers will be time-consuming and challenging. There will be a same number of finger gestures required for both Android and iOS in VoiceOver.
- WCAG 2.0 checkpoints:
Most of the countries use this W3C guideline as global standards. Many countries had the same guidelines but don’t match with the W3C guidelines. So, it is advisable to ensure that all audit compliance with WCAG 2.0 AA.
You have to cover the tests like screen reader testing, zooming the application, color ratios, site readability and navigation. Mobile testing for accessibility need not be a big task and can be very similar to the desktop testing requirements. There is overlap desktop site compared to what appeared to be the same on a mobile phone can have a completely different bug when you test them.