Interaction
Keyboard access, focus order and visibility, input modalities, error recovery, dialogs, menus, and complete task flows.
Professional practice
How I test digital accessibility
A repeatable, user-centered process for moving from scope to defensible findings, practical remediation, and verified closure.
Evaluation workflow
Five stages with traceable evidence
Define scope
Confirm the product, representative user journeys, technologies, target standard, conformance level, environments, exclusions, and reporting expectations.
Explore and sample
Identify essential functions, page and component types, dynamic states, authentication boundaries, documents, media, and repeated patterns.
Evaluate
Combine automated discovery with manual keyboard, structure, zoom/reflow, contrast, forms, dynamic content, and assistive-technology testing.
Report
Write reproducible findings with criterion, severity, user impact, evidence, remediation guidance, and objective acceptance criteria.
Retest and prevent regression
Repeat the original task, verify programmatic and visual behavior, inspect adjacent patterns, and record the final disposition.
Test coverage
Manual evaluation leads the decision
Perception and structure
Headings, landmarks, names, roles, states, relationships, reading order, contrast, zoom, reflow, and text spacing.
Assistive technology
JAWS, NVDA, VoiceOver, TalkBack, ZoomText, and refreshable Braille—selected according to scope and supported environments.
Risk and prioritization
Severity reflects user impact
I consider whether a barrier blocks an essential task, how many journeys or components it affects, whether a workaround exists, the populations affected, and the likelihood of recurrence. WCAG mapping supports the decision; it does not replace the explanation of real-world impact.
- Critical
- Blocks an essential task with no reasonable workaround.
- Serious
- Creates substantial difficulty, loss of information, or unreliable operation.
- Moderate
- Causes friction or limited access but leaves a practical path forward.
Senior practice
Make accessibility sustainable
Root-cause analysis
Group repeated failures by component, template, design token, authoring pattern, or process gap so one correction can remove many defects.
Audience-aware communication
Translate the same evidence into implementation guidance for developers, design feedback for product teams, and risk summaries for leaders.
Definition of done
Include accessibility acceptance criteria in planning, component review, content workflows, QA, procurement, and release decisions.
Sample deliverable
See the methodology applied
Review a complete example with scope, environment, findings, recommendations, acceptance criteria, and retest results.
Open the sample audit report