11 Free Mobile Accessibility Testing Tools

According to W3C “Mobile accessibility” refers to making websites and applications more accessible to people with disabilities when they are using mobile phones and other devices. WAI’s work in this area addresses accessibility issues of people using a broad range of devices to interact with the web: phones, tablets, TVs, and more.

Mobile Accessibility Testing Tools

Accessibility testing on mobile devices can be made easy with the following tools, while automation catches 40% of the bugs we always need to perform manual accessibility audits to make sure that applications are universally designed.

• Accessibility Insights for Android
  Accessibility Insights for Android is a free, open source tool that helps developers find and fix accessibility issues in Android apps. The tool runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux. You can test apps on a hardware device or on an Android Virtual Device.
  
• Accessibility Scanner
  Accessibility Scanner is a tool that suggests accessibility improvements for Android apps without requiring technical skills. Just open the app you want to scan, then tap the Accessibility Scanner button to find items in the app that might benefit from accessibility improvements. You can use this app to suggest changes to developers or to make changes yourself.
  
• Accessibility Inspector in Xcode
  Apple provides the Accessibility Inspector testing tool that can be launched by choosing Xcode > Open Developer Tool > Accessibility Inspector in the menu bar or Dock. You can download Xcode from the Mac App Store for free. The Accessibility Inspector presents a utility window that displays the information properties (and values), action methods, and position in the accessibility hierarchy of the object currently under the mouse pointer.
  
• Flow Analyzer for Mobile
  Automatically pinpoint accessibility issues in iOS and Android mobile applications and generate actionable reports.
  
• a11yTools – Web Accessibility
  a11yTools is a collection of HTML Web Accessibility Testing Tools in one location in a Safari Extension used for quick and easy Accessibility testing. Run your favorite Accessibility testing tool and then take a screenshot showing the a11y error to developers and designers. a11yTools is a one-at-a-time testing tool where you pick the HTML Accessibility element or feature you’re testing once-per-page rather than running all tests together. Test and results can be stacked on top each other e.g. to show both Headings and Image Alt Text Properties.
• Google Scanner for A11y
  Google Scanner for A11y abbreviated GSCX is a developer assistant, as an objective-C library it sits in an iOS app’s process scanning it for issues to catch them before the developer even writes a test for them. The scanner comes built-in with checks for catching accessibility issues and supports an extensible plugin framework for adding your own checks.
• UBKAccessibilityKit
  UBKAccessibilityKit allows you to audit your iOS app on device, removing the need to stop and inspect each element via Xcode. UBKAccessibilityKit can be added to your exisiting project and includes the following features.
  • Change text, tint and background colours live in app.
  • Warnings & Validations
  • Check colour contrast on text, tint and background colours
  • Add in custom colours using the colour hex code.
  • Swap foreground (Text & tint) colour with the background colour.
  • Brand colours;
  • Minimum size
  • Missing accessibility label
  • Missing accessibility traits
  • Missing accessibility hints
  • Missing accessibility value
  • Missing isAccessibilityElement
  • Dynamic text sizes supported
  • Show touch points on screen, handy for when you’re doing presentations or recording a video and want to show touches and swipes on screen.
  • Highlight warnings as they are detected using the “Outline warnings” feature
• Accessibility Test Framework for Android To help people with disabilities access Android apps, developers of those apps need to consider how their apps will be presented to accessibility services. Some good practices can be checked by automated tools, such as if a View has a contentDescription. Other rules require human judgment, such as whether or not a contentDescription makes sense to all users. This library collects various accessibility-related checks on View objects as well as AccessibilityNodeInfo objects (which the Android framework derives from Views and sends to AccessibilityServices).
• Axe Android
  Automated WCAG 2.0 and WCAG 2.1 Accessibility library for Android Applications.
• Color Contrast +Mobile accessibility checker
  Color Contrast is a tool to measure the contrast between two colors in a screenshot or mobile website, helping ensure your app meets the internationally recognized recommendations in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), for both versions 2.1 and 3.0 (Silver) Color Contrast has the following features:
  • + Verify that the color contrast between two colors in an app, website or photo is sufficient to pass WCAG 2.1 accessibility guidelines / Section 508.
  • + View suggested colors
  • + Generate a report that can be shared using SMS, Email or Notes.
  • + Verify color contrast directly from Safari and Photos app.
  • + Audit web pages for compliance using AXE.
• Contrast — Color Accessibility
  Make sure the text you’re designing isn’t too light in your interface designs with Contrast. Combine this simple little menu bar app with your favorite design tool and design with accessibility in mind. Enter hex codes manually or use the built in color picker for sampling colors directly from your designs. Tear the app from the menu bar and use it as a floating window wherever you’d like. It’ll stay on top of your active design tool for quick access to the WCAG contrast scores.

There are a number of bookmarklets/favelets that also help test for accessibility bugs on responsive design, so please check out our collection of “Bookmarklets for accessibility testing” & also feel free to share any more tools/resources that can be added to the list.