Tracking accessibility over time with Exports

An important part about creating a reliable cadence for accessibility testing, is ensuring that you are testing early and often. Whether you’re launching a net-new product or feature, or evaluating key flows over time – consistency is key. With Compatibility Tests and exports, you can easily track your progress (or regressions) over time. Take feedback from Fable and implement it directly into your product development cycles, using whatever project management tools work best for you. Check out these tips below to help you get started.

Illustration of brunette woman wearing a yellow t-shirt.

Amber Knabl, Customer Success @ Fable

“With every new release or update, there’s an increased possibility of a broken or inaccessible experience for a user.”

Screenshot of the Fable export feature. Options to download your data in either Word or Excel format.

Benchmarking and maintenance

Evaluate if/how your product’s accessibility experience has changed over time. 

Establish a baseline for accessibility

  1. Identify 2-5 key flows for your product
  2. Submit a Compatibility Test for each, to get your baseline accessibility results
  3. Export and analyze your results. When tracking over time, pay particular attention to data like: 
    1. Total # of issues
    2. Accessibility rating
    3. Ease of use rating
    4. Completion rate
  4. Remediate, if necessary 
  5. Transition to benchmarking and maintenance 

Benchmarking and maintenance

  1. Resubmit Compatibility Test(s) quarterly, or after any major release (Tip: you can quickly and easily use the “copy” feature to do this!)
  2. Analyze your results, cross-referencing with baseline results to ensure no regressions
  3. Remediate, if necessary 
  4. Repeat steps 1-3 at your desired frequency

Product and Feature Releases

Don’t wait for your users to tell you there are accessibility issues with your new product or feature. Test for accessibility both pre, and post, release. 

Pre-release

  1. Identify key flow(s) for your product/feature
  2. Submit Compatibility Test(s)
  3. Analyze your results. When tracking over time, pay particular attention to data like:
    1. Total # of issues
    2. Accessibility rating
    3. Ease of use rating
    4. Completion rate 
  4. Remediate, remediate, remediate. (Pre-release, there will be issues!)
  5. Resubmit Compatibility Test(s) for validation (Tip: use the “copy” feature for this)
  6. Analyze your results, cross-referencing with previous results to ensure fixes
  7. Remediate, if necessary. 
  8. Repeat steps 5-7 as necessary, until ready for release. 

Post-release

  1. Use the “copy” request feature to resubmit your Compatibility Test 
  2. Analyze your results, cross-referencing with previous results to ensure no regressions or new issues. 
  3. Remediate and repeat steps 1 and 2, if necessary. 
  4. Introduce regular maintenance testing (see above)

Proactive > Reactive

Don’t wait for your users to tell you there are accessibility issues with your new product or feature. Remember:

  1. With every new release or update, there’s an increased possibility of a broken or inaccessible experience for a user.
  2. Accessibility should be a requirement, not an afterthought.
  3. Accessibility is a journey – there will always be ways you can improve an experience for assistive technology users.