Empowering Inclusive Testing: A Guide to Accessibility

“The application has to be accessible, have we done accessibility testing?” How many of you can relate to this question? Not just this but how many of you become puzzled from where to even start, what tools to use, how to embed this with the existing code? Well, you are in for a treat of a tutorial!

Accessibility testing is essential, especially for user-facing applications. With at least 1 in 5 people in the UK having a long-term illness, impairment, or disability, and many more facing temporary disabilities, ensuring accessibility is not just a legal requirement but a moral obligation. In this session, we'll delve into the importance of integrating accessibility into non-functional testing and discuss practical strategies for making your product more accessible. From exploring tools for testing accessibility features to understanding relevant legislation, this tutorial offers valuable insights for testers of all levels. Don't miss out on the opportunity to shift left and make accessibility testing a seamless part of your team's workflow.

I will be taking you over a super interesting tutorial where we will learn all things accessibility, especially the shinny new EU 2025 legislation that is coming in, wait what, you were not aware of this? Do not worry, you have plenty of time and I will make sure you take back a great toolset and skillset with you and make a big impact.

What will you learn?

1. How to think more accessibly: Having a broad mindset and spot potential barriers to access.
2. How to test more accessibly: How to use existing tools and understanding the results whether thats by using the keyboard, browser extensions, automated testing, and using assistive technology.
3. How to help our colleagues make more accessible Web Content: by using the social model of accessibility, annotating and checking designs, and following the WCAG guideline

Extra learnings include:

• Which testing tools are available and most commonly used.
• How to assess the accessibility of a component or page.
• The difference between automatic and manual testing.
• How to use automatic accessibility testing tools and how to interpret the results.
• How to use the keyboard and screen readers to discover accessibility bugs.
• How to test both on Desktop and Mobile 
• How to integrate accessibility testing in your day-to-day development workflow.
• Running tests on the command line and creating automated reports.
• Integrating accessibility testing in your build pipeline.

Who is this for?

Join me for an eye-opening session on Accessibility Testing: Shifting Left for a More Inclusive Future! Everyone is welcome here! In this hands-on and practical workshop, we’ll learn about testing for web accessibility from the EU 2025 law, WCAG compliance and beyond, auditing, manual testing, automated checks, and what we can do to help our Product Managers, Designers, and Developer friends to make accessible products for everybody.