It’s estimated that 1.3 billion people worldwide have a disability. Despite this, most digital products don’t cater to the full spectrum of human abilities, not only neglecting those with diverse needs but also missing out on an opportunity to improve usability for everyone.
As awareness grows around this need for accessible digital solutions and international regulations such as the European Accessibility Act (EAA) emerge, tech teams are seeking ways to build inclusivity into their development cycles.
Adopting an agile approach can supercharge this process, as it naturally aligns with the continuous learning and improvement that’s essential for accessible web and mobile development. Paired with accessibility testing, organizations are discovering the secret to building truly inclusive products.
The result is not only widened user access but also enhanced product quality, resource savings, and a crucial competitive edge.
Here’s how to do it.
How to Integrate Accessibility Testing in Agile Development Phases
Sales and Pre-Contract
During the sales and pre-contract stage, sales teams and project managers play a pivotal role in educating potential clients about the importance of accessibility. To convey how accessibility improves user experience and broadens market reach, they must highlight it as a value proposition that goes beyond compliance. By conducting preliminary accessibility assessments and incorporating accessibility requirements into proposals and contracts, organizations lay the groundwork for a development process that prioritizes inclusivity from day one.
Here, an initial accessibility audit of an existing product can provide invaluable insights into a product’s current state and influence the project's scope and priorities. This audit typically involves combining automation tools and manual testing to identify major accessibility issues, such as keyboard navigation problems, insufficient color contrast, or missing alternative text for images.
When working on entirely new products, teams can leverage low-fidelity prototypes and mockups to demonstrate accessibility considerations. These early-stage designs can showcase semantic HTML structure, proper heading hierarchies, and clear navigation patterns. This illustrates how accessibility can be baked into the product from its inception and enables dev teams to instill confidence in their ability to craft inclusive digital experiences.
Discovery
The planning and inception stage sets the foundation for accessibility throughout the entire development lifecycle, ensuring that inclusive design principles are embedded in the project's DNA from the start.
During this stage, the development team collaborates with stakeholders to define the project's accessibility goals and integrate them into the overall product vision. This means creating accessibility-focused user stories, incorporating them into the initial product backlog, and establishing clear success criteria for accessibility features.
This can be enforced by incorporating accessibility criteria into both the Definition of Done (DoD) and a Definition of Ready (DoR) which significantly enhances product backlog management in terms of accessibility. A DoD that includes specific accessibility checkpoints ensures that no feature or user story is considered complete without meeting the predetermined accessibility acceptance criteria.
Similarly, a DoR that includes accessibility considerations helps ensure that user stories include accessibility requirements before being brought into a sprint, promoting proactive rather than reactive accessibility implementation.
Software like Stark can be a game-changer for designers and developers, enabling them to incorporate accessibility from the earliest design concepts. Stark integrates into the workflows of Figma, Sketch, or Adobe XD and provides real-time accessibility checks and guidance as designs evolve.
The plugin can simulate various types of color blindness directly within the design files to ensure inclusive color choices. Stark also offers an advanced color contrast checker which helps to verify that text and UI elements meet the WCAG guidelines for readability.
Development
During the development phase, agile teams transform planned accessibility features into reality and guarantee that each product increment produces components and features that are inherently accessible.
As a general best practice, it’s worth mentioning that clean code and accessibility go hand in hand, as well-structured code facilitates the integration of inclusive features like assistive technology support, navigation control, and adaptable layouts.
Furthermore, developers can leverage accessibility-focused tools within their workflow to catch potential issues early in the coding process. These automated accessibility checks are integrated into the CI/CD pipeline, allowing teams to identify and address accessibility issues quickly. For web development, teams can integrate Axe-core into build pipelines. And for efficient testing for mobile, they can use Accessibility-Test-Framework-for-Android, A11yUITests and Accessibility Snapshot.
Accessibility Scanner (Android) and Accessibility Inspector (iOS) are powerful tools that product teams can use regularly to scan mobile interfaces and identify accessibility improvements. For web content, the WAVE browser extension helps teams spot accessibility issues directly within the browser.
Development teams may also use automation test frameworks during this phase: Appium, Espresso, and XCUITest for mobile, and Selenium, Playwright, and Cypress for web. While these frameworks allow teams to easily execute (some built-in, some plugin-based) accessibility tests, they can require more time consuming adjustments depending on the test subject. As such, they should be used intentionally for the most crucial parts of the individual application.
Product teams should also conduct manual testing with screen reader software during the development phase. By navigating through the application using only a keyboard and listening to how a screen reader interprets the content, the team gains invaluable insights into the user experience for individuals with visual impairments or physical disabilities. This experience-based testing approach helps developers empathize with diverse user needs, often leading to more intuitive and inclusive design decisions.
While there are numerous how-to guides and testing checklists available, incorporating testing sessions with real users with disabilities is the cherry on top, providing authentic feedback that no simulation or acquired expertise can fully replicate. Scheduling these manual and real user testing sessions at key points in the agile development cycle, e.g. before major releases, ensures that accessibility remains a consistent focus and allows for timely adjustments based on genuine user feedback.
Release and Maintenance
The release and maintenance phase is where accessibility efforts shift from active development to ongoing monitoring and improvement. It’s crucial to ensure that the accessibility features implemented during development continue to work as intended and evolve with the product over time.
Teams must conduct comprehensive accessibility audits before each release to ensure compliance with all accessibility standards. Providing prompt feedback on any issues is crucial to maintain a continuous cycle of accessibility improvements.
This ongoing commitment to accessibility not only maintains compliance with evolving standards but also demonstrates a dedication to inclusive design that can enhance user satisfaction and brand reputation in the long term. As part of this commitment, organizations should provide clear channels for users to report accessibility issues and publish an up-to-date accessibility statement, detailing the product's current accessibility status and ongoing efforts for improvement.
Why Agile Accessibility Testing?
Embracing accessibility in agile development is not just about compliance; it's a strategic advantage that can significantly impact a product's success and market position. By integrating accessibility early in the development process, organizations can dramatically reduce costs associated with retrofitting and avoid potential legal issues.
The iterative nature of agile development provides an ideal framework for ongoing accessibility improvements. Each sprint offers an opportunity to gather feedback, evaluate the overall progress, test the latest product increments with impaired users, and implement changes, gradually building a more inclusive product. This continuous refinement not only improves the user experience for people with disabilities but often leads to innovations that benefit all users.
The First-Mover Advantage
It’s difficult to overstate the urgency to act on accessibility, with early adopters in this space already gaining a competitive edge. In fact, 51% of consumers are willing to pay more for accessible products, while WCAG-compliant products have a 50% higher market performance than their non-compliant competitors.
Once a globally operating entity in a sector establishes itself as the accessible option, it becomes increasingly challenging for competitors to catch up or to get back some of the migrated users with disabilities who spend their money elsewhere.
This first-mover advantage extends beyond just market share; it encompasses brand reputation, user loyalty, and the ability to attract a diverse customer base.
Integrating accessibility into agile processes isn't just about doing the right thing––it's about securing a future-proof position in an increasingly inclusive digital landscape.
Are you ready to build truly accessible digital products and be known as a brand that prioritizes inclusivity and access for all?
Our accessibility experts are here to help. Get in touch today.
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