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4 Favorite Tools for Testing Website Accessibility

Some of our favorite tools for testing how accessible a website is include Skynet Technologies’ Color Blindness Simulator, Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool by WebAIM, Contrast Checker by WebAIM, and PageSpeed Insights. There are no shortcuts when it comes to building truly accessible and inclusive website experiences. However, it’s useful to reach for a reliable tool that will help make sure your work is as close to perfect as possible. 

Let’s take a brief look at each one and why we love it!

Color Blindness Simulator

This tool lets you see how someone with color blindness would see your image, website, or application. You just upload the image, or insert the website URL, and you can see versions of it that simulate various kinds of color blindness. This list includes:

  • Green-weak
  • Green-blind
  • Red-weak
  • Red-blind
  • Blue-weak
  • Blue-blind
  • Achromatopsia
  • Blue Cone Achromatomaly 

Testing for this kind of thing is important because, while your color scheme may look perfect to you, it might look like a disaster to someone else. Even worse, there may be important information or elements that someone cannot see or interact with because it’s in a color they can’t see. 

Skynet Technologies’ Color Blindness Simulator

Evaluation Tool

We build websites using all the accessibility best practices we can. Even still, sometimes we miss something. Or, we might need to evaluate someone else’s site to see how we can provide improvements. This tool is perfect for that.

Insert the website URL and you can see a clear picture of not only what errors appear, but where they are on the page. 

This checker looks for things like:

  • Low color contrast errors
  • Redundant alternative text
  • Long alternative text
  • Missing alternative text
  • Redundant links
  • Presence of an H1
  • Confirmation of correct heading order
  • ARIA breakdown

This is a great way to visualize exactly where you need to go to fix each issue. 

Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool by WebAIM

Contrast Checker

Color contrast is one of the most talked about website accessibility elements. This tool makes it one of the easiest things to get right. 

Enter the hex value of the foreground, and then the hex value of the background. You’ll be shown:

  • The color contrast ratio
  • Whether the combination would pass against WCAG AA: Graphical Objects and User Interface Components
  • Whether it would pass WCAG AA or WCAG AAA for large text
  • Whether it would pass WCAG AA or WCAG AAA for small text

One of the best features of this tool is that you can slide around the lightness of each color and see how the ratings change in real time. If your color combination of red and yellow doesn’t work, you can darken the red or lighten the yellow until they pass. Then use the resulting hex values for your design.

Contrast Checker by WebAIM

PageSpeed Insights

Website accessibility is about more than how a site looks. It’s also about how the site works. The PageSpeed Insights tool is a fantastic way to gather a ton of data about a website. 

You’ll see scores for:

  • Overall site performance 
  • Accessibility
  • Best Practices
  • SEO
  • Mobile and desktop versions for each of the above

Drilling down to the Accessibility portion, the tool provides you with actionable tips about how to improve. Use the Performance area to improve things like loading speed, the Best Practices section for some security related elements, and SEO to evaluate things like structured data.

PageSpeed Insights

Did we miss your favorite website accessibility testing tool? Let us know in the comments below!