Accessibility Testing | FAQ

FAQ > Accessibility testing

Accessibility standards are typically guidelines and not rules. They are designed to guide you into making good decisions, rather than providing prescriptive rules. Some human judgement may also be called for, making it impossible to check everything with automated tools: For example, checking that a text description of an image (in any language) describes that image.

However, tools like Total Validator can help you quickly identify potential issues, and can be used during all parts of the initial development process, and afterwards when updating a website. They can provide automated checks for anything you may have missed, across large numbers of pages, where manual checks would be too impractical and costly.

Conforming to accessibility standards also means strictly validated HTML and CSS, so that accessibility aids will operate correctly. It also means spell checking, to ensure users can understand the content. That's why with Total Validator you can test Accessibility, HTML, CSS, and spelling in one go, saving time and effort, whilst ensuring your site is truly accessible.

For the most comprehensive accessibility testing we recommend using the Validate DOM option. This allows us check any changes made when running javascript and applying CSS to the page. It also allows us to perform contrast testing.