Accessibility of digital content to everyone despite their abilities is crucial in today’s digitalized world. Certain laws ensure equal opportunities and eradicate discrimination towards people with impairments. AODA or Accessibility for Ontarians with Disability Act is one of the biggest accessibility laws in Ontario, Canada.
Whether these laws are being executed properly or not needs to be tested, and hence AODA evaluations have started. Go through this article covering the overview of the AODA testing. We’ll also cover the key challenges faced by businesses in conducting these valuations and effective solutions for the same.
What is AODA Testing?
Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act provides guidelines for businesses and corporations to have their digital content accessible to everyone. AODA has been mandated by law since 2005. AODA Testing refers to the testing of digital content for accessibility levels.
The testing includes checking all the digital content on sites and mobile applications. There are certain standards of accessibility that must be acquired for the sites to pass the AODA Testing. This testing helps in ensuring the proper execution of accessibility guidelines given by AODA.
Prominent challenges in AODA testing with solutions
There can be a number of challenges in the process of AODA website compliance test. The following are some of these top challenges, along with some of their possible solutions.
- Awareness issues
The first step in bringing about any change is the awareness of the importance of that very change. The people responsible for the change must understand the need for the change. In this instance, the developers, designers, and owners of businesses must understand why accessibility is so important. One challenge to AODA evaluation is the lack of awareness from the stakeholder’s side.
Solution: Awareness and training programs must be held occasionally to adequately educate the team members. The need for accessibility and the seriousness of proper execution must be highlighted. Certain members can be chosen to oversee the implementation of accessibility goals.
- Restrictions of tools
There are not a lot of accessibility testing tools available in the market at the moment. Moreover, the already existing accessibility tools are for the generalized global market. Hence, these tools fail to check the AODA-specific guidelines. Also, automated testing tools tend to miss small things which indirectly affects the accessibility of the digital content.
Solution: Special scripts must be written for just AODA guideline testing. This ensures that the modded generalized accessibility testing tools can be used for AODA evaluation. Further, manual testing done by humans must be done with the use of automated tools.
- Issues related to integration in development
Since accessibility is a rather new topic, accessibility testing is even newer for people. Adding the accessibility features can be time-consuming and expensive. In certain instances, it can be a project hindrance for developers. The usual designing phase is not used to include accessibility principles.
Solution: The accessibility principles and goals should be integrated early on in the designing phase. This will ensure the development of the websites is done in a way that already follows the accessibility guidelines.
- Feedback integration
Feedback from the customers and users is essential for the success of any service-providing business. Changing the ways and updating with the feedback of users is set to allow the company to grow exponentially. In accessibility testing, integrating user feedback has some challenges. Accessibility testing is done with the use of automated tools. These can only be checked for the guidelines made. To ensure proper accessibility, one must listen to their users to combat small and big issues.
Solution: Proper feedback and surveys should be conducted to collect the feedback of the users. Another way of incorporating user feedback in AODA testing is by testing the accessibility of the content with the help of people with disabilities.
- Lack of proper resources
AODA evaluation can be an extensive and hectic process. Changing the design of an already existing site or application to meet the AODA requirements can be time-consuming. This is one resource that keeps companies from incorporating accessibility features. Certain businesses also lack other resources like money and proper tools. There is also a lack of properly trained personnel to carry out the accessibility testing.
Solution: One can check the most used features first. This orderly checking helps to ensure every high-priority aspect of the website or application is working all right. One can also look for hiring professional accessibility testers and getting investors or sponsors.
- Regular updates
As the new technology is evolving, new accessibility tools and techniques are coming out. Hence, there are regular updates happening to the AODA guidelines. This can be a challenge for AODA website compliance tests as regular changes are needed to be made.
Solution: There must be an environment encouraging continuous learning. This will push the team members to keep learning about the innovations in the tech field. It is also important to keep checking the updates happening to AODA guidelines.
Ending words
In the end, it can be concluded that with proper planning and a proactive approach, the AODA testing challenges can be dealt with. The problems can vary from a lack of awareness and training about accessibility to improper execution of accessibility principles.
One must enforce the above-discussed solutions to make digital content accessible for all.