Unpopular opinion: I stopped relying on automated accessibility checkers for my web forms

I was building a sign-up page for a local library project and the checker said everything was fine, but my friend who uses a screen reader got totally lost. I manually tabbed through the form myself for like 20 minutes and found the error messages weren't being announced at all. I fixed it by adding proper aria-live regions, which the tool completely missed. Has anyone else found that just using a keyboard and some patience catches things the software doesn't?

2 comments

2 Comments

danieljenkins3d ago

Yeah, that "manually tabbed through" part is key. I do the same with a simple voiceover test on my phone now. It catches those missing announcements every time.

bailey.xena3d ago

Totally. I read an article that said screen reader testing is the bare minimum for accessibility checks now.