Accessibility Automation Testing Tool by PayPal

Overview

It’s often true that a quality tester or anyone for that matter would look for robust features and possibly have all features at one place. When it comes to identifying automated tool to check for accessibility of a web interface, some of the questions that would come up with are:

1. Does this tool be able to test as per standards?
2. Does this tool be able to cover all segments like use of colors, forms, headings, tables etc.,?
3. Does this tool be able to generate a report?
4. Can I be able to export results for my own purpose?

One such tools that was recently open sourced by PayPal is Automated Accessibility Testing Tool [External link].

What is AATT?

AATT tests web applications regarding conformance to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0. Find a list of the WCAG 2.0 rules checked on the HTML CodeSniffer WCAG Standard Summary page. AATT provides an accessibility API and custom web application for HTML CodeSniffer. Using the AATT web application, you can configure test server configurations inside the firewall, and test individual pages.

AATT includes HTMLCodeSniffer with Express and PhantomJS, which runs on Node.

For example, it can be used to test Java web applications using SeLion automation test frameworks.

For node applications, it can be integrated into NemoJS testing framework to run accessibility testing during automated unit testing.

Features of AATT

1. There are two tabs in the interface; one is to test by providing a website address and second is to test by writing code into its editor
2. Tester can choose if to see screenshots or not to see them. Good part is that it shows the screenshot of the element that has a problem
3. Tester can configure to display errors, warnings and notices
4. By clicking on “Test Page” button, an alert is displayed as loading and as the process gets completed, results are displayed in a table format that includes:
   1. Error level – this displays whether one is error, warning or notice
   2. Second column displays name of Principal hyperlinking to its documentation on ‘s documentation
   3. Then displays the description of error / warning / notice
   4. Next column displays the code snippet of the element; this would be very useful for developers to identify where the actual problem is
   5. Second last column displays link to technique from WCAG documentation to resolve the problem
   6. And the last column displays “Screenshot (if selected above)
5. In the results table, first two columns (error type and Principal) are sortable
6. Ability to export results as CSV file
7. If web pages are beyond the firewall and require authentication, one can use “Login” feature and provide Web page address, user name and password so that tool will create a cookie and process the testing

Refer to AATT documentation for instructions for download and setup.

Happy testing!