Verify Web Accessibility during test execution – ACCELQ

Subscription: Enterprise Edition        Availability: Release 6.0

When running Automation tests on web applications, you can enable the validation of Web Accessibility. This will comprehensively validate accessibility parameters as defined by the WCAG 2.0 and 2.1 on level A and AA compliance requirements, as well as a number of best practices.

This validation is achieved contextually for every page in your application as a functional automation test is executed. No explicit effort is required from a test development point of view.

Since the process is embedded in the functional test cycle, all the pages touched during the automation test are covered for Web Accessibility validation. This avoids an otherwise tedious effort to cover various paths and pages involved in an application flow.

Enable Web Accessibility Validation

Click the Non-Functional Testing section in the Run modal and enable the Web Accessibility validation. This will automatically kick off the validation of accessibility parameters at the beginning of each Action in the test Scenario.

Execution and Reporting

Once Web Accessibility is enabled, accessibility is validated for every element on the web page at the beginning of each step (Action) in the test Scenario. This is executed right after the page synch is completed.

Test Report shows a clear listing of all violations, grouped by severity and category of failure. Reporting provides rich visual controls to highlight failing HTML elements and navigation across these elements.

Click on the left-nav listing of different types of violations. Once the image is loaded, you can navigate across all instances of the elements with that violation.

Extensive information related to the nature of the violation and the possible remedial steps is also accessible with the "More info" link.

Classification of Accessibility Violations

All the calculated violations are listed under 3 groups:

Needs attention: Issues that require a remedy, as per the WCAG 2.0 and 2.1 on level A and AA standards.
Probable issues: Issues that the tool cannot ascertain for sure. Needs an expert review to qualify.
Best Practices: Issues that are good to be fixed, but not necessarily regulatory.

Understanding and Remediating Accessibility Errors

When an accessibility violation is flagged in your test report, ACCELQ provides deep contextual information to help you quickly understand and fix the issue. Next to each violation, you will find a "More Info" link. Clicking this link opens a detailed explanation of the specific WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) rule that has been violated, why it's an issue, and often, code-level suggestions for remediation.

This feature is designed to empower developers and testers to not just identify but also learn how to resolve accessibility barriers effectively.

Common Remediation Categories

The "More Info" link provides guidance across all major accessibility areas. The suggested remedial steps typically fall into categories such as:

Content & Semantics: Addresses issues like missing alt text on images or improper heading structures. Remediation involves adding descriptive text or using correct HTML tags (e.g., <nav>, <main>) to provide necessary context for assistive technologies.

Visual Readability: For violations like low text-to-background color contrast. The suggested fix is to adjust CSS color values to meet required contrast ratios, ensuring legibility for users with visual impairments.

Form Interactivity: Corrects problems like form inputs lacking corresponding <label> elements. The solution is to properly associate labels with each input, making forms understandable and navigable for screen reader users.

Navigation & Usability: Fixes errors such as links that lack discernible text or keyboard traps. Remediation involves adding clear link descriptions (e.g., via aria-label) and ensuring all interactive elements are accessible via keyboard commands.

By utilizing the "More Info" link and understanding these common fixes, your team can systematically improve your application's accessibility, ensuring a more inclusive experience for all users.

Note: Automated accessibility testing is a valuable tool that can help you quickly and reliably identify potential accessibility issues on your application pages. However, while automated testing can be an efficient supplement to manual assessment, it should not be viewed as a complete replacement, particularly when it comes to regulatory compliance requirements.

Comments

1 comment

Mark Paul

March 19, 2026 10:55
The product needs more. I would like to submit bugs for each violation, but it does not seem to allow that. additionally, I would like to be able to refine the type of violations I am interested in so future executions ignore violations I choose. Example, Minor offenses like foreground color. I would like to ignore it, so when Critical issues get fixed, in the next run the test will pass.

Aside being able to report each violation as a bug individually, It would be great if I could export the results with images. I am left manually taking screen shots and interpreting to my UI/UX team the issues I see and the element they are on. The current image download, does not download an image state with the overlay or the pinpointed element.

Lastly, often element locators are truncated, so I am only able to share a portion of the locator for the element and the UI/UX team struggles to find the violation.
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Enable Web Accessibility Validation

Execution and Reporting

Classification of Accessibility Violations

Understanding and Remediating Accessibility Errors

Common Remediation Categories

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