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In a world where 1 billion people have a disability, it’s impossible to ignore the growing need to create a more accessible web. We’ve taken this challenge head on and made accessibility an important part of the way our company operates and the software we develop. So as part of our Global Accessibility Awareness Day celebration this month, we wanted to share some of the ways that we’ve been able to embrace accessibility as part of our company culture and give the same access to information to our employees who are visually impaired or hard of hearing.
Making Our Office More Accessible
In our office, we prioritize making QA accessible to everyone, reflecting our commitment to an inclusive workplace, both virtually and physically. We have implemented several measures to ensure that our environment accommodates the diverse needs of our employees. For instance, conference rooms and appliances in our kitchen are labeled in Braille, making it easier for visually impaired employees to navigate and use these spaces independently. Additionally, devices and employee birthday cards are also labeled in Braille.
Our office is equipped with adjustable desks to accommodate different needs, promoting comfort and productivity for all team members. We have also developed an inclusive emergency evacuation plan, ensuring that everyone, regardless of their physical abilities, can safely exit the building in case of an emergency.
Accessibility for PLUS QA’s Website
High-Contrast Theme
Recently, PLUS QA’s website underwent a major redesign – going from a primarily light theme to a completely new and refreshed dark one. Besides giving our site a fresh coat of paint, we chose to pursue this update to help give content on our website a greater degree of contrast and make it easier for users with visual impairments to be able browse each page. This also brought our website more inline with recent marketing materials we’ve produced that had been revised with a goal to improve their visual accessibility.
Accessibility Tested
Before launching a new revision of our site, it first undergoes an extensive audit by our accessibility team to evaluate that it passes against the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Our accessibility testing team’s experience testing hundreds of websites a year allows them to provide valuable insight into how to provide a more accessible experience on the web.
It’s important to us that our website accurately reflects our commitment to digital accessibility, which is why we also include an Accessibility Statement page. It’s here that we share more information about the version of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines we follow and offer ways for our users to provide feedback about the accessibility of our website.
Sharing What We’ve Learned
A more accessible web is a common goal that we continue to work towards in the QA industry and one way that we like to contribute is by sharing the knowledge we’ve obtained over our 16 years of testing for accessibility.
On our QA Blog, we cover a variety of topics related to accessibility each year. Some examples include:
- Most Common Accessibility Violations on Web and Mobile Apps
- 2023 Disability Statistics in the US, EU, and UK
- New WCAG Guidelines: Impact on Quality Assurance Accessibility Testing
- European Accessibility Act: Key Insights
Our objective is to always offer a new and interesting perspective on the realm of digital accessibility and help others learn more about the subject matter. One of our favorite ways to share information about accessibility is by creating guides and resources that can be downloaded for free from our website.
Accessibility for PLUS QA’s Internal Tools
Our Developed Software
Both of our internal tools including our Test Platform and Resources management software have been designed, developed, and tested to be accessible to our clients and team members. Using valuable feedback from members of our team who experience a range of disabilities, we’ve been able to iterate and improve our tools over the years to bring them closer than ever to being 100% accessible experiences.
One of Test Platform’s major features, Test Passes, was built from the ground up to support the use of screen readers and keyboard navigation to read and complete test cases as well as file bugs and accessibility violations.
Slack
Besides collaborating with each other face to face in our office, our internal Slack workspace is a place where our employees spend a lot of time communicating with each other. We ensure our virtual spaces are inclusive by always making sure that information is distributed in a way that can be accessed by non-sighted users including using alt text for images. This enables members of our team who have a visual impairment to still be able to engage and socialize with their peers regardless of the content that is being shared.
Conclusion
Our passion for accessibility drives us to keep working hard towards a more accessible future for all users. This is why we’ve also made accessibility an integral part of how our business and workplace culture function.
Accessibility testing is at the heart of creating more accessible digital experiences and our accessibility team continues to grow as more companies are recognizing the need to test the accessibility of their digital products.
If you’d like to learn more about how we can help test your application or website for accessibility, visit our accessibility testing services page or get in touch with us today!