Download Download Accessibility Insights for Windows 1.1.1562.01 / 1.1.1606.01 Pre-release Free

Accessibility is a vague term that can contain almost a lot of content. In short, accessibility refers to the ability of everyone (regardless of their (permanent, temporary or situational) conditions) to obtain something equally.

Although 20 years ago, accessibility was not actually a factor in designing applications or websites (or even everyday products), but today the situation is very different and it is only for improvement.

When finishing work, the Web may have become the center stage, but good old-fashioned Windows applications are still important resources in many aspects of our lives, such as education, employment, business, health, entertainment, etc.

This is why Microsoft has since decided to develop a Accessibility insights for Windows.

What does it do?

In short, Accessibility Insights for Windows is a development-related tool (although it is very easy to use) that helps developers find and resolve accessibility issues before launching products to customers.

The main idea behind the app is high-impact inspection. To understand this, let’s take a look at the three modes of the application (or the main scenario as Microsoft calls it): real-time checking, FastPass, and troubleshooting.

Check, test, repair

Live Inspect provides developers with a hands-on method to find accessibility issues. They only need to hover the mouse over each GUI element (or set the keyboard focus on that element) to verify each GUI element and its attributes.

Elements are displayed in the UIA tree, and developers can choose how they view attributes.

The second case is FastPass, which is a lightweight, two-step, fully automated process that can provide developers with a broader idea of ​​potential accessibility issues within the application. FastPass has two sub-programs: automatic check and Tab stop test.

The first means that the application uses more than 60 accessibility features to automatically check compliance. The Tab Stop test provides clear instructions, as well as a beautiful visual helper that can help developers identify key issues (related to missing Tab Stop, potential keyboard traps, incorrect tab order, etc.).

Last but not least, the final solution allows developers to diagnose and fix specific accessibility issues. The application provides a clear pattern to determine whether the element correctly responds to user input. Developers can also log application events to see if they have produced the expected results. As the name suggests, there is also a built-in contrast checker that can identify pressing contrast problems and propose various solutions.

in conclusion

Accessibility is definitely something that anyone or company who is serious about providing quality products cannot ignore.

Microsoft has promoted this process through Accessibility Insights for Windows, a free, open source application that anyone can use to improve its product and ensure that the product is fully and equally suitable for as many people as possible.