Lesson 13How to evaluate the accessibility of your web content?
- Notion 90 - Evaluating your digital project's accessibility with the use of automated testing tools
- Notion 91 - Tools for evaluating colour choices and contrast
- Notion 92 - Tools for evaluating your digital project’s readability
- Notion 93 - Tools for inspecting your digital project's code
- Notion 94 - Tools for testing for any other accessibility violations
- Notion 95 - Tools for evaluating overall compliance with WCAG standards
- Notion 96 - Test the accessibility of web pages yourself with automated tools
Notion 92
Tools for evaluating your digital project’s readability
Target skills
The importance of automated testing for readability of web content
As mentioned, good readability consists of clear and concise writing. You can achieve such writing by sticking to shorter paragraphs, using simpler words, avoiding literal language, etc. For a detailed overview of the elements of readability, refer to Notion 5: Grain 32 of this module.
Readability is one of the accessibility criteria that you could assess manually. However, if you have a lot of text in your digital project, this could turn into a time-consuming and tedious task. This is where the utility of automated testing tools comes in: they can scan text and suggest corrections for better readability in moments.
External links to test your content's readability
Automated readability tools differ in their functionalities. They consist of tools that can:
- scan PDF or Word documents for readability (remember: the documents found on your digital project also need to adhere to accessibility standards!)
- identify and provide information on fonts (as a reminder, Sans Serif fonts are the most accessible)
- calculate readability based on the number of schooling years needed to understand the text (according to WCAG success criteria, this means that text needs to be understandable to users with 7-9 years of schooling)
Tools for identifying fonts
Several browser extensions can provide this service, but one of the most downloaded is WhatFont: http://www.chengyinliu.com/whatfont.html
Tools for checking the web accessibility of documents
Create and verify PDF accessibility (Acrobat Pro):
https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/create-verify-pdf-accessibility.html
Vision Australia Document Accessibility Toolbar: https://www.visionaustralia.org/services/digital-access/document-accessibility-toolbar
PAC 2021, The Free PDF Accessibility Checker: https://pdfua.foundation/en/pdf-accessibility-checker-pac
Tingtun PDF Checker:
http://checkers.eiii.eu/en/pdfcheck/
Tools for an online assessment of a text's readability and understandability
Readability Calculator: https://www.online-utility.org/english/readability_test_and_improve.jsp
Hemingway App: https://hemingwayapp.com/
Here is an example of how Hemingwayapp assesses the readability of text:
