ometere123/the-skills-bible/accessibility-testing-specialist

Accessibility Testing Specialist

Purpose

Verify that people with disabilities can perceive, understand, navigate, and operate critical experiences.

Use this skill when

• A product needs accessibility verification.
• Automated scans pass but barriers may remain.
• New components or workflows affect keyboard or assistive technology.
• Accessibility defects need regression coverage.
• A user interface is being released. (historical, merged from #94 accessibility-testing-specialist)
• Components or design systems change. (historical, merged from #94 accessibility-testing-specialist)
• Automated checks need manual validation. (historical, merged from #94 accessibility-testing-specialist)
• Users report accessibility barriers. (historical, merged from #94 accessibility-testing-specialist)

Do not use this skill as the primary workflow when

• The task is accessibility design alone.
• The user needs legal advice on a specific jurisdiction.
• Only a colour palette review is requested.
• The request is design guidance only. (historical, merged from #94 accessibility-testing-specialist)
• The product has no human-consumed interface. (historical, merged from #94 accessibility-testing-specialist)
• Formal legal certification is requested. (historical, merged from #94 accessibility-testing-specialist)

Required inputs

• Critical user journeys and content.
• Supported browsers, devices, and assistive technologies.
• Accessibility requirements and standards.
• Component and semantic architecture.
• Known user feedback and defects.

Classify missing information as blocking, important, or optional. Inspect the actual requirements, risks, architecture, code, test suites, environments, data, telemetry, defect history, release process, and supported platforms before asking for information that can be verified directly.

• Target workflows and platforms. (historical, merged from #94 accessibility-testing-specialist)
• Accessibility requirements and target. (historical, merged from #94 accessibility-testing-specialist)
• Design system. (historical, merged from #94 accessibility-testing-specialist)
• Browsers, devices, screen readers, and input methods. (historical, merged from #94 accessibility-testing-specialist)
• Roles, content, forms, and dynamic states. (historical, merged from #94 accessibility-testing-specialist)

Core operating principles

• Test risks and user outcomes, not implementation details alone.
• Choose the cheapest test level that can provide trustworthy evidence, then retain a small number of realistic end-to-end checks.
• Keep tests deterministic, isolated, observable, maintainable, and proportional to failure consequence.
• Use representative data, environments, concurrency, timing, permissions, devices, and dependency behaviour.
• Verify durable state, externally visible outcomes, and side effects rather than status codes or UI text alone.
• Treat failures, retries, cancellation, partial completion, race conditions, recovery, and degraded operation as normal test scenarios.
• Distinguish product defects, test defects, environment defects, data defects, and expected variation.
• Preserve accessibility, privacy, security, performance, and compatibility while creating test coverage.
• Make quality evidence traceable to requirements, risks, changes, incidents, and release decisions.
• Remove flaky, redundant, low-value, and obsolete tests instead of growing suites without control.
• Tests exist to provide decision-relevant confidence, not to maximise counts or coverage percentages. (historical, merged from #94 accessibility-testing-specialist)
• Trace verification to approved requirements, risks, architecture, contracts, data, and user outcomes. (historical, merged from #94 accessibility-testing-specialist)
• Prefer the cheapest test level that can reliably expose the targeted failure. (historical, merged from #94 accessibility-testing-specialist)
• Keep tests deterministic and explicit about time, randomness, concurrency, and external dependencies. (historical, merged from #94 accessibility-testing-specialist)
• Use representative data without exposing production secrets or personal information. (historical, merged from #94 accessibility-testing-specialist)
• Preserve failing evidence before changing code, fixtures, environments, or baselines. (historical, merged from #94 accessibility-testing-specialist)
• Do not weaken, skip, or delete a valid test merely to make a build pass. (historical, merged from #94 accessibility-testing-specialist)
• Separate product defects, test defects, environment defects, and requirement gaps. (historical, merged from #94 accessibility-testing-specialist)
• Include negative, boundary, permission, recovery, compatibility, and operational scenarios proportional to risk. (historical, merged from #94 accessibility-testing-specialist)
• Treat test maintenance, runtime, diagnostics, ownership, and trustworthiness as first-class concerns. (historical, merged from #94 accessibility-testing-specialist)

Workflow

1. Prioritise journeys

• Select account, navigation, search, forms, transactions, settings, errors, and support flows.
• Include high-consequence tasks.

2. Run automated checks

• Use rules for missing names, relationships, contrast, structure, and invalid attributes.
• Treat results as partial evidence.

3. Test keyboard

• Verify logical order, visible focus, no traps, skip mechanisms, menus, dialogs, drag alternatives, and all actions.

4. Inspect semantics

• Check landmarks, headings, labels, roles, states, tables, lists, and accessible names.
• Use accessibility trees.

5. Test forms and errors

• Verify instructions, required state, grouping, autocomplete, validation, summaries, announcements, and preserved input.

6. Test visual adaptation

• Check zoom, text spacing, reflow, contrast, high contrast, colour independence, and responsive content.

7. Test motion and timing

• Respect reduced motion, pause controls, timeout extension, seizure safety, and non-motion alternatives.

8. Test screen readers

• Use representative desktop and mobile combinations for critical journeys.
• Check reading order, controls, updates, and errors.

9. Test alternative interaction

• Include touch, voice, switch, magnification, and keyboard equivalents according to product risk.

10. Report and regress

• Describe user impact, exact path, platform, evidence, remediation intent, and regression test.
• Avoid guideline-only findings.
• Identify critical journeys, components, states, devices, and assistive technology. (historical, merged from #94 accessibility-testing-specialist)
• Set depth. (historical, merged from #94 accessibility-testing-specialist)
• Include errors and recovery. (historical, merged from #94 accessibility-testing-specialist)
• Use supported scanners. (historical, merged from #94 accessibility-testing-specialist)
• Review findings manually. (historical, merged from #94 accessibility-testing-specialist)
• Record tool and version. (historical, merged from #94 accessibility-testing-specialist)
• Complete workflows without mouse. (historical, merged from #94 accessibility-testing-specialist)
• Verify focus order, visibility, trapping, shortcuts, and escape. (historical, merged from #94 accessibility-testing-specialist)
• Check dialogs. (historical, merged from #94 accessibility-testing-specialist)
• Inspect headings, landmarks, labels, roles, states, and reading order. (historical, merged from #94 accessibility-testing-specialist)
• Verify accessible names. (historical, merged from #94 accessibility-testing-specialist)
• Check custom controls. (historical, merged from #94 accessibility-testing-specialist)
• Use representative combinations. (historical, merged from #94 accessibility-testing-specialist)
• Navigate by semantic structures. (historical, merged from #94 accessibility-testing-specialist)
• Verify dynamic updates and errors. (historical, merged from #94 accessibility-testing-specialist)
• Check contrast, non-colour cues, text spacing, zoom, reflow, focus, and target size. (historical, merged from #94 accessibility-testing-specialist)
• Test forced colours where supported. (historical, merged from #94 accessibility-testing-specialist)
• Verify labels, instructions, required state, error summary, association, and recovery. (historical, merged from #94 accessibility-testing-specialist)
• Check timeout and expiry. (historical, merged from #94 accessibility-testing-specialist)
• Check reduced motion, flashing, autoplay, captions, transcripts, and controls. (historical, merged from #94 accessibility-testing-specialist)
• Avoid motion-only information. (historical, merged from #94 accessibility-testing-specialist)
• Review consistency, language, instructions, distractions, and authentication burden. (historical, merged from #94 accessibility-testing-specialist)
• Include user research where possible. (historical, merged from #94 accessibility-testing-specialist)
• Describe barrier and user impact. (historical, merged from #94 accessibility-testing-specialist)
• Prioritise by task blockage. (historical, merged from #94 accessibility-testing-specialist)
• Retest with the same method. (historical, merged from #94 accessibility-testing-specialist)

Decision rules

Required outputs

• Journey coverage.
• Automated results.
• Keyboard results.
• Semantic review.
• Form and error results.
• Visual adaptation.
• Motion and timing.
• Screen-reader results.
• Alternative-input results.
• Findings and regressions.
• Scope and target. (historical, merged from #94 accessibility-testing-specialist)
• Keyboard findings. (historical, merged from #94 accessibility-testing-specialist)
• Semantic and screen-reader findings. (historical, merged from #94 accessibility-testing-specialist)
• Visual findings. (historical, merged from #94 accessibility-testing-specialist)
• Form and error findings. (historical, merged from #94 accessibility-testing-specialist)
• Motion and media findings. (historical, merged from #94 accessibility-testing-specialist)
• Barrier report. (historical, merged from #94 accessibility-testing-specialist)
• Retest evidence. (historical, merged from #94 accessibility-testing-specialist)

Testing and quality gates