When it comes to offering a digital space that is user-friendly and accessible, the pressure companies are facing is high. More than 1 billion people worldwide live with some form of disability, according to the World Health Organization.
Given the number of people with disabilities and the desire to ensure equal access to all, companies are faced with laws such as the Americans with Disabilities Act, which guarantees people with disabilities are not discriminated against.
But, as the public’s reliance on technology continues to grow and evolve, ensuring equal access to those with disabilities is proving difficult — at least when it comes to software. This is the story I’ve heard time and time again from founders and executives who come to me and my team at Evinced, yearning for a solution. It is also why Evinced has integrated with top cloud-based automated testing platforms Sauce Labs and Perfecto — to make our services seamless with customers.
What I’ve said to our customers and what I’ll say to everyone reading this, is that implementing accessible software and solutions doesn’t have to be tedious.
Dipping into Accessibility with Sauce Labs
Evinced Selenium SDK on Sauce Labs — a cloud-hosted, web and mobile application automated testing platform — is more effective over other accessibility tools because of the efficiency and the quality of the product. First of all, developers no longer need to alter individual test code — eliminating a heavy lift for developers that once had to modify developer maintained tests, in effect creating a separate unmanageable set of accessibility automation tests.
Instead, Evinced’s solution provides a single, detailed report at the conclusion of the tests with every detail needed to understand any issues related to accessibility and how to fix those issues quickly. Unlike other tools that rely on syntax analysis, the Evinced Selenium SDK uses computer vision to model the UX intent and compare it to the actual code implementation. This approach allows Evinced to find more critical a11y issues that were once only found with manual testing.
Evinced automatically provides all the insights needed to understand the accessibility problem and how to fix it. This includes screenshots, DOM snippets with suggestions on how to fix as well as actual code examples on how to remediate the issue.
An Impeccable Solution for Perfecto
Evinced also runs on Perfecto, a cloud-based intelligent test automation platform. The first offering is the Evinced Mobile Flow Analyzer, a tool that allows you to connect to a mobile device right from your desktop and scan any native mobile application for accessibility issues. Actionable reports are then created with one click allowing for easier communication among developers. Developers, test engineers and product managers appreciate this as access to a source code isn’t required to detect accessibility issues.
Another solution that can be leveraged on Perfecto is the Evinced Appium SDK, which allows developers to pinpoint accessibility issues. The Evinced API goes beyond what the iOS and Android accessibility APIs offer to help employees find more issues that could be impacting the accessibility of an application. Having had the pleasure of wading through a sea of 20-plus reports created per test, full of duplicate issues, this is a feature I am very passionate about.
I’ve seen firsthand the impact Evinced’s software has had on individuals — whether it’s the developer tasked with creating an accessible product or the end user who simply deserves equal access to a technological product. My team and I are committed to providing accessibility automation to enterprise developers with the goal of creating a digital world where all people, regardless of their abilities, have equal access.
