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Tips for developers: Get your website teted for accessibility – Part 2 – Operable

This is Part 2 of 4 parts on how a developer should get their website or application tested for accessibility. Objective of this series is to provide easy method of accessibility testing to developers so that they can test as they code. This is how we would achive accessibility right at the development and design stage. These tips would not only be helpful to developers but also to interaction designers who decides interaction of elements and those who develop prototypes. This Part 2 is related to Operable section of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1.

Question: How to test for keyboard accessibility?
Answer: Load the page. Press CTRL + Home (Windows), this will take focus to the top of the page. Then use tab key to move from one element to another. Use enter or space key to activate an element. One should be able to activity every element including menus, modals, buttons etc.,

Question: When I was browsing a page with keyboard, focus does not move from an element, focus just gets stuck; is there a problem with my keyboard?
Answer: Probably not, this is called keyboard trap and needs to be avoided. When a component recieves keyboard focus, there should be mechanism to move away keyboard focus from same component.

Question: What to consider when there is a time limit for a page?
Answer: Check if there is an option to turn-off timing, adjust as per user’s requirement or extend the time limit. There could exceptions such as activity at real-time, esential time limit such as a test and time limit of 20 hours and more.

Question: What to look for elements that moves, blinks or scroll?
Answer: There should be a mechanism to pause, stop or hide. If content is being updated automatically, there should be a mechanism to pause or set how periodical that an update should happen.

Question: What is bypass blocks and how do we test?
Answer: Bypass blocks is a mechanism to enable keyboard users to skip representative set of blocks such as navigation and jump quickly to main content. This can be achieved by providing “Skip to main content” link at the top, using appropriate heading structure and/or using ARIA land marks.

Question: How to test page titles?
Answer: Look at top bar of browser window and see if page title does exist and is appropriate. For example Page title should be page name along with the company / domain name. It should not be just company name only on all the pages.

Question: What all needs to be considered as Focus order issues?
Answer: Ensure that the tab order is logical, if an element opens a modal, focus focus must be set to modal and must not move out until user closes the modal, When modal is closed, focus should be returned to the triggered element.

Question: Testing for link purpose
Answer: Ensure that all links have meaningful and spell out the context to the users. Avoid links like “Read more”, “Click here” etc., Using automated tools would be effective to test this requirement.

Question: What are the multiple ways required for a website?
Answer: A search functionality or a site map. There should be more than one way to reach a specific page on the website.

Question: How to test for focus visible?
Answer: When you tab through the page, every element should receive an indicator and you should be able to see where the keyboard focus is. It can be either custom focus indicator or browser’s default focus indicator.

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