4.6 Testing Apps for Accessibility
Learn about testing applications for accessibility.
- taking time to understand the guidelines you are required to follow
- understanding the known defects with APEX
- conducting your own testing
- About Accessibility Testing
Develop a full testing strategy for your applications. - About Accessibility Checks in Advisor
Use the Advisor to perform accessibility checks on a single page or on an entire application. - Running Advisor on a Single Page
Perform accessibility checks (and others) on a page in an app. - Running Advisor on an Entire Application
Perform accessibility checks (and others) on an entire app.
Parent topic: Developing Accessible Apps
4.6.1 About Accessibility Testing
Develop a full testing strategy for your applications.
- testing throughout the development cycle, rather than just at the end
- making testing the responsibility of all developers on your team and an integral part of your design and development process
- testing with people with different abilities and assistive technologies
- paying particular attention to any non-standard content included in your app, like plug-ins or 3rd party libraries
APEX includes a built-in tool called the Advisor, which developers can run as part of quality assurance of an application. The Advisor includes a set of accessibility checks to highlight possible common accessibility problems, such as page items with no labels or page regions with no row headers defined. Developers should review and fix these problems as part of their ongoing development process. We recommend fixing issues identified by the Advisor before performing other accessibility testing, such as testing with assistive technologies.
Parent topic: Testing Apps for Accessibility
4.6.2 About Accessibility Checks in Advisor
Use the Advisor to perform accessibility checks on a single page or on an entire application.
The Advisor performs the following accessibility checks when you run it. These checks identify some common configuration errors that have a negative impact on accessibility.
- Theme Style tested for accessibility
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Theme Styles that have not been tested for accessibility may contain more issues, such as insufficient color contrast.
- Page has page title
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Meaningful page titles help users understand the content and purpose of the current page. (Note: Global pages, and pages with no regions are excluded from this check.)
- Region has Row Header
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Regions that support row headers should have a column with the Value Identifies Row attribute set to Yes.
- Page item has label
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The item should have a defined label. For example, only defining the Value Placeholder text is not sufficient in labelling an item for accessibility.
- Page item does not cause an unexpected context change
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Some page item settings can cause an unexpected change of context for the user, such as select lists that submit the page after a value is selected.
Consider the following ways to retain the context of the page:- Remove page submit or redirect behavior from page items, and replace the functionality with Dynamic Actions or Cascading LOVs (if you need to stay on the same page).
- Notify users what happens when they click an item. For example, adding "Launches new page" in the label.
- Display Image item has image ALT text defined
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Display Image page items must provide text or a column (depending on the Based On setting) to serve as the image's alternative text. This is important for accessibility, as it is the only way for some users to perceive the content of the image.
Parent topic: Testing Apps for Accessibility
4.6.3 Running Advisor on a Single Page
Perform accessibility checks (and others) on a page in an app.
To run Advisor on a single page:
Parent topic: Testing Apps for Accessibility
4.6.4 Running Advisor on an Entire Application
Perform accessibility checks (and others) on an entire app.
To run Advisor on an entire application:
Parent topic: Testing Apps for Accessibility