We live in the age of AI, where quick and easy information is accessible to everyone at their fingertips. In such a setting, if your website does not propel information in the same way, you fall into the abyss of forgotten businesses. With over 6.4 billion people on the internet, your business needs to be accessible to each one of them to unleash your full potential, and that includes a vast pool of customers, 1.3 billion of whom are disabled in one way or another. Accessibility testing has hence become more important than ever, as it checks how easily the audience can navigate through your website.
What is Accessibility Testing
As the name suggests, accessibility testing is the process of testing how accessible a website is to its users. This ensures that your website is navigable even to people with disabilities like auditory, visual, motor, or cognitive. The goal is to make your website comprehensible to every user who opens it by eliminating impediments that limit usability.
Accessibility testing tools ensure that people can interact with, understand, and navigate through a website without any obstacles
How Is Accessibility Analyzed
Accessibility testing depends upon a few key factors:
1. Error Density
There is a quote by the famous author C.S. Lewis, “A sum can be put right: but only by going back till you find the error and working it afresh from that point, never by simply going on.” (The Great Divorce, 1945). This holds to many situations; it simply means that you can only fix a situation in life by fixing the errors you made in the process, rather than just simply carrying on with life.
Accessibility testing takes this factor into consideration and analyzes the number of accessibility issues that occur in a website; these issues may be of different natures, like auditory or visual. The number of issues a site might have is the number of solutions it would need to be fully accessible to its users.
2. Screen reading capability
One of the most used senses in the human body is the auditory sense. We listen to people on a regular basis; even when we are alone, we have some sort of music or an audiobook playing in the background as white noise; we play focus music while working, listen to upbeat music while working out, and also listen to stories to fall asleep. Our listening capabilities are in use 24/7, and this is the reason most websites must have a read-aloud feature.
This would make it convenient for many to navigate through your website and get a full grasp of your offer, but for a visually disabled person, this becomes a necessity. Your visual content cannot be accessible to them if there isn’t a read-aloud feature. That is why, while accessibility testing, the percentage of your visual content that can be read aloud is checked.
3. Keyboard accessibility score
Disabled people who rely on Braille cannot use trackpads or a mouse; they have special Braille keyboards, which help them use these keyboards just like a regular user. The keyboard accessibility score takes into account the number of interactive features that can be operated through a keyboard. In regular websites, there are many features, like dropdowns, menus, sliders, etc., which are generally not navigable through a keyboard, which makes them inaccessible to the visually impaired.
4. WCAG compliance levels
WCAG, or Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, is a set of rules that explains how to make digital content accessible to the disabled. It overlooks websites, apps, and other digital content. It assesses how well your website fulfills the WCAG parameters. The guideline defines three levels:
- A- meets the basic requirements of accessibility to its users
- AA- A level compliance + additional criteria that makes it more accessible to more users
- AAA- A level + AA level + additional criteria for the widest possible range of accessibility for every user. This is the highest level of accessibility compliance according to the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium)
The 2025 WebAIM Million Report revealed that 94.2% of websites do not meet the current Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), and only 5.2% of the top million websites pass the basic accessibility standards.
The reason for such a massive contrast is that most businesses see it as a vexing legal requirement that is way too expensive and provides little return. This, however, is not true. Businesses can benefit heavily in the long term by making their websites accessible.
Benefits of Accessibility Testing
1. Avoid penalties
Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 requires federal agencies to make their electronic and informational technology conform to the guidelines set in WCAG 2.0 AA of the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium). Getting your website analyzed would only ensure that you are protected from any penalties that have been imposed by the government for the lack of accessibility for the disabled.
According to the WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines), companies must maintain at least an AA rating. According to the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act), it is mandatory for online businesses to keep in mind the accessibility of every person in mind.
2. Wider audience
16% of the global population is disabled in some way or other. That constitutes a big section of your untapped customers. After running free accessibility testing tools on your website, you will be fully tapping into the market and targeting every customer looking for your services online, despite their disabilities.
3. Improved user experience
The user will enjoy using your website, as the overall navigation of it will be easier for a regular customer as well as a disabled person. The website will have multiple features, like a screen reader that will read out the entire text on the screen. This will not only benefit the blind but also regular users who can understand what your business does through your website while doing push-ups.
4. Enhanced goodwill
When you care about everyone, despite their differences, and try to establish equitable treatment for them all, is when you get a positive view in the market. To be seen like this in front of your audience and in front of your investors enhances your goodwill and cements you in the minds of your customers for posterity. Accessibility testing plays a crucial role in this transition, as it can help you understand the places you are lacking and the improvements that are needed to make your website perform equally well in front of all audiences.
5. Low bounce rate
An easy-to-use website will always hold the attention of its audience better and for a longer period of time. If your website is easily accessible to a lot of people, despite their disabilities, they will stay at your website longer and not search for other alternatives.
6. Better SEO
Search engines prioritize providing high-quality and user-friendly results to their audience. With an accessible website which has low bounce rates and is easily accessible to everyone who visits the website, you will be sending positive signals to the algorithm. This positive impact will boost your visibility and ensure that your website is ranked high on search engines. Accessibility testing allows you to analyze the accessibility percentage of your website; a higher accessibility score means lower bounce rates, increased on-page time, and improved usability. This helps you cement your identity in the eyes of the search engines.
7. Boomer Market
According to a 2024 survey, Baby Boomers constitute about 19.67% of the US population and are the wealthiest of all consumer groups. They were the first ones to experience the digital age and are used to it, but with the passage of time, they have now reached an age where their physical capabilities may start deteriorating, their eyesight may get weaker, they might require hearing aids, and their sense of direction may get fuzzy. They may not be disabled, but with time, they may face these issues. If your website does not serve their needs, like zoom-ins or screen readers, they might never stop at your website again, and that is saying goodbye to some of your largest pool of customers.
Final Thoughts
Accessibility testing ensures that your business promotes a more inclusive world, where people with disabilities become a part of the digital world, get access to the same resources, and are open to the same knowledge as others around them. It also helps expand your audience and improve brand reputation. Many governments around the world have mandated digital accessibility, and for businesses operating in countries like these, free accessibility testing tools like Accessibility Analyzer are non-negotiable.