Microsoft recently open sourced[1] one of the main tools they use for web accessibility testing.
Accessibility Insights for Web (https://accessibilityinsights.io) is a Chrome extension that guides you through doing an accessibility assessment of a website. It includes a combination of automated checks (using aXe[2]) and assisted/guided manual checks. Its rules are based on the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines[3]; passing a full assessment in the tool amounts to meeting all the "A" and "AA" WCAG 2.0 requirements.
Like other commenters have mentioned, automated checks (like aXe) are a great start, but aren't really sufficient on their own. Accessibility Insights will lead you through how to test different aspects of screen reader usage (and other types of accessibility issues, too!). It will also help you track issues as you go, and produce a pretty report at the end that you can attach to a bug.
As with most types of UI testing, no matter what tools you're using, there's really no substitute for watching a real user try to use your product.
Disclaimer: I am an engineer that works for Microsoft on the Accessibilty Insights team.
Hey I just tried this out, it's pretty awesome. Hadn't heard of it at all before. Love the tab-index mapping. Have you folks talked to the Lighthouse team to get your work integrated there; or at least possibly referenced there? I know lighthouse has a couple of accessibility recommendations, would be nice to have visibility on it.
Accessibility Insights for Web (https://accessibilityinsights.io) is a Chrome extension that guides you through doing an accessibility assessment of a website. It includes a combination of automated checks (using aXe[2]) and assisted/guided manual checks. Its rules are based on the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines[3]; passing a full assessment in the tool amounts to meeting all the "A" and "AA" WCAG 2.0 requirements.
Like other commenters have mentioned, automated checks (like aXe) are a great start, but aren't really sufficient on their own. Accessibility Insights will lead you through how to test different aspects of screen reader usage (and other types of accessibility issues, too!). It will also help you track issues as you go, and produce a pretty report at the end that you can attach to a bug.
As with most types of UI testing, no matter what tools you're using, there's really no substitute for watching a real user try to use your product.
Disclaimer: I am an engineer that works for Microsoft on the Accessibilty Insights team.
[1] https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/opensource/2019/03/12/micro... [2] https://www.deque.com/axe/ [3] https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/quickref/