Accessibility Testing vs. Functional Testing

Functional testing is concerned with the functionalities that enable the software system or application to work as per the required functional specifications and business requirements. Accessibility testing is concerned with the web application’s accessibility. It ensures the disabled community can easily access a website or specific application. The UI design and usability are pondered and worked upon in the accessibility testing process. In functional testing, the focus is on ensuring that a given input should provide the desired output. In this article, you will learn the differences between accessibility and functional testing. 

What Is Accessibility Testing?

It is a testing method that uses assistive technologies to make sure that a website or application is fully accessible and can be easily accessed by disabled people. Assistive technologies include a special keyboard, screen magnification, screen reader, and speech recognition software. Accessibility testing should abide by WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) standards for optimal testing outcomes.

What Is Functional Testing?

It is a testing method wherein a software system is validated against the functional specifications/requirements. Each function’s output is checked against the user’s expectations. A predetermined set of specifications are tested against the application’s functionalities. It is a black-box testing technique that is not concerned with the application’s source code.

The Strategic Significance of Accessibility Testing

Accessibility testing requires as much energy, focus, and attention as other kinds of functional testing. Changes must be made to browser and phone settings to rely on voice assistance, change zoom levels, enlarge fonts, etc. 

The world of digital media is growing exponentially. Thus, the market for websites and digital applications is embraced by various industries such as banking, education, retail, insurance, etc. Hence, applications should be developed according to the accessibility guidelines, which, in turn, can also prove to be of great help to the disabled community. There are many countries where fully accessible websites and applications have become mandatory.

Websites and applications built according to accessibility guidelines can reach a wider audience and thus look forward to expanding their brand. Another essential aspect of accessible websites is that they will have rich text, which can help to improve the SEO ranking of the specific website.  

The Strategic Significance of Functional Testing

This testing ensures that the application’s functionality is working as intended. Potential issues are identified early in the development process and fixed at the earliest. This, in turn, ensures that the software application being built is safe and secure. The number of errors is considerably reduced. Organizations can save substantial costs and time in the long run. 

The objective is to ensure that the key expected outputs are delivered to the end user. All the client-specific requirements mentioned in the software requirement specifications and business requirement specifications document should be incorporated into the functional testing process.

A functional tester focuses on analyzing and working on the application’s individual pieces within the context of the whole application. The functional tester looks into specific items, and then the integration points are identified between those items and other parts of the application so that a strategy can be formulated to inspect those weak points.

Types of Accessibility Testing

Manual Code Review

As per research, approximately 80% of the WCAG 2.0 standards and 100% of the updated WCAG 2.1 standards should be undertaken manually, which means the code should be reviewed manually. Manual testers must have the necessary WCAG experience and technical review knowledge. They should also be able to inspect the CSS, HTML, and JavaScript aspects that conform to WCAG standards.

Automated Testing

Specific accessibility issues are quickly identified and remediated through the automated testing platform to improve accessibility. 

User Experience (UX) Review 

The inspection of larger site design elements is considered in the UX review so the accessibility and usability aspects can be tested accordingly. UX review analyzes the following factors:

• Logical page layout
• Visual structure
• Menu functionality
• Button size.

User Testing 

Disabled people will test the website and application and then provide feedback on quantifying the accessibility factor.

Types of Functional Testing:

Unit Testing 

It is a testing method where the smallest components of the code, known as “units,” are tested individually. A unit can be an object, method, function, etc. These tests are really small and thus can be written and executed quickly. These tests are designed in such a way that only a single section of code is covered for verifying its functionality.

Smoke Testing 

The most crucial parts of the application are verified using this testing method. Smoke testing makes sure that the application is functional at the basic level. If it’s not functional, then the application cannot be moved to other levels of testing.

Sanity Testing

The basic functionality is verified without going into the finer details of the application code. A ‘sanity check’ ensures that the new code performs as expected.

Integration Testing

It is a testing method that determines whether two or more modules that have been integrated can work as expected. The objective is to analyze and evaluate the module’s behavior when they are integrated with other modules.

Regression Testing

It ensures that the changes introduced to the code do not alter the existing functionalities of the application. The objective is to ensure that the existing functionalities are not altered, despite making changes and updates to the code or introducing a new feature.

User Acceptance Testing

It is a testing method where an end-user will test the application or product in a real-time environment. User feedback plays a key role, as the feedback will help the team further enhance the product’s quality. 

UI/UX Testing

It is also known as “visual testing,” wherein the application’s GUI (Graphical User Interface) is thoroughly evaluated. The performance of the UI components, such as text fields, buttons, menus, etc., is verified to ensure that the user experience is up to the mark.

Pros and Cons of Accessibility Testing

Pros

• Testing can be conducted on various devices. 
• Specific areas in an application that requires extra attention are pointed out.
• Time and effort are saved to a considerable extent. 

Cons

• Some techniques and coding errors can result in non-compliance and cannot be reported.
• A good amount of configuration and tuning is required to minimize false positives.
• Accessibility testing cannot be eliminated in its entirety.

Pros and Cons of Functional Testing

Pros

• It ensures that an application’s functionality is working as per the required expectations. 
• The safety and security of the application are adequately met.
• The product quality is enhanced.
• The system is tested under different scenarios and conditions.
• Testing plans can be revised, and progress can be tracked accordingly.

Cons

• It is a time-consuming process as a lot of technical details need to be worked on continuously.
• It cannot be relied upon entirely, as only the core functionalities are tested thoroughly. 
• It is a tedious process, which, in turn, leads to slow test times and some bugs being missed.