Overview
This article is for faculty, staff, and students who create or share digital content. It explains why accessibility checking is required and how to use automated tools and manual testing to ensure compliance with digital accessibility standards.
Checking is Required
Checking for accessibility is a critical step to ensure content meets the required digital accessibility standards and works for everyone. Before publishing or sharing content, always check it by using both automatic checkers and manually reviewing with human judgement and assistive technologies. This step is important because critical issues such as broken links, incorrect heading structure, and missing alternative text can occur even in well-designed documents. These errors create barriers for individuals using assistive technologies like screen readers, making content difficult or impossible to access.
Accessibility Checker Tools
Automated checker tools are a helpful starting point to catch common issues before diving into a full manual check. Many tools include built-in accessibility checkers, and there are also standalone tools available, that help flag issues like missing alt text, poor contrast, incorrect reading order, and other problems. Some recommended accessibility checkers for use at Minnesota State University, Mankato are listed below. Note: Automated tools can make mistakes. Only a human can determine true accessibility.
- YuJa Panorama: Available in D2L and as a stand-alone tool.
- Microsoft Accessibility Checker: Available in Microsoft apps like Word and PowerPoint.
- Adobe PDF Accessibility Checker: Available in Adobe Acrobat Pro.
- ANDI: A bookmarklet that provides automated detection of accessibility issues, reveals what a screen reader should say for interactive elements, and gives suggestions to improve accessibility and check compliance.
- WAVE: A suite of tools designed to help make web content more accessible.
Manual Testing for Accessibility
Manual testing is always required. This means reviewing content the way real users experience it, without relying solely on automated tools.
How to Perform Manual Testing
- Test with a screen reader: Turn on VoiceOver (iOS), TalkBack (Android), Microsoft Narrator (Windows), ChromeVOX (Chromebook), or install NVDA (Windows). Close your eyes and navigate your favorite app. Every unlabeled button or image will suddenly become invisible.
- Increase text size to maximum in settings: Does your layout adjust gracefully? Do words overlap and buttons disappear?
- Test color contrast outdoors: Step into bright sunlight. Can you still read the buttons?
- Fact: poor contrast is one of the most common accessibility issues
- Switch your device to grayscale: Do instructions still make sense without color cues (“Click the green button” won’t work).
- Try captions on videos: Turn sound off. Are captions accurate, synced, and complete?
- Fact: 80% of caption users are not deaf or hard of hearing.
- Enable Dark Mode: Is content still clear, or do logos and icons disappear into the background?
- Try high-contrast mode (Android) or Smart Invert (iOS): Does the app break visually?
- Test with one hand only: Can you still reach all the main actions (especially on large phones)?
- Rotate the device (portrait to landscape): Does the app adapt, or do important features vanish?
- Check hit targets: Can you tap small buttons without misclicking?
More Resources
Still Need Help?
Creative Production offers help with document formatting, design, and redesign if needed. Please note, Creative Production cannot ensure accessibility for content created by other users. They may need to re-create a document to ensure accessibly, if you choose to use their services. Costs apply. Submit a ticket to request Creative Production services
IT Solutions primarily supports digital accessibility for academic and course-related materials including document accessibility, captioning and transcription services. Support for other content may be available if time allows, with costs applying to non-course materials. Submit a ticket to request IT Solutions services