Accessibility Insights
Installation
Accessibility Insights is a browser extension.
Use the following links to install Accessibility Insights for your browser:
Accessibility Insights is not available for Safari or Firefox.
How to use
Once installed, the tool can be launched from your extensions bar. It will appear as a heart icon with a magnifying glass inside.
If you have multiple extensions installed, view the full list by selecting the 'extensions' jigsaw piece which appears next to the URL.
Accessibility Insights provides 4 options:
- FastPass: runs 3 automated tests to find the most common accessibility issues in less than 5 minute
- Quick Assess: runs 10 assisted checks to find more accessibility issues in 30 minutes
- Assessment: walks through a guided process for assessing accessibility compliance
- Ad-hoc tools: provides quick access to visualisations that help identify accessibility issues
These options provide guided tests and can act as a checklist to ensure you have tested and assured all parts of your product or website.
What results could look like
FastPass
Automated checks will run on your target page. The Accessibility Insights for Web page will open in a new browser window and the individual failures will be highlighted directly in the target page.
The following example shows the result of when automated checks have been run on a product or website.
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Quick Assess
Check the top 10 Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (known as WCAG) 2.2 Level AA success criteria with Quick Assess.
There are 3 types of requirement:
- Automated - the tool identifies instances and evaluates them automatically
- Assisted - the tool actively helps you identify or evaluate instances
- Manual - the tool provides instructions for identifying and evaluating instances
The example shows the results of 1 of 10 of manual checks on a product or website. Manual checks are ones you do yourself.
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Assessment
An assessment is a comprehensive process that measures compliance with WCAG 2.2 Level AA success criteria. The assessment process currently includes 24 tests, and each test covers one or more accessibility requirements.
There are 3 types of requirement:
- Automated - the tool identifies instances and evaluates them automatically
- Assisted - the tool actively helps you identify or evaluate instances
- Manual - the tool provides instructions for identifying and evaluating instances
Using the assessment tool, you can save your audit and retrieve it later on. You can also generate a report showing issues and tests completed.
The example shows the summary of a full assessment and provides information about which checks passed, failed, or are yet to be done.
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Ad-hoc tools
From the toolbar icon, select Ad hoc tools to get quick access to visualisations that help you identify accessibility issues.
This opens a window which lets you highlight headings, tab order, and names of interactive elements.
The example shows a page in grayscale, the colour visualisation helps you identify instances where colour is the only visible means of conveying meaning.
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What to do next
You need to check or verify that the accessibility issues the tool finds are issues, rather than false positives or false assurances.
If an issue is genuine, speak to your developer or design team to consider, then implement, a fix.
You can read guidance for how to manage and prioritise issues in the knowledge hub.
Information about this page
- Created
- 5 August 2024
- Last reviewed
- 5 August 2024
- Last updated
- 5 August 2024
- Reason this page exists
- This page exists to help people understand how to use tools to test for, and understand accessibility issues in a product.
- Suggest a change or comment
- Issue 37