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Accessibility QA: The Four POUR Principles

by Tim Chau

A practical introduction to accessibility testing through the four POUR principles

What is accessibility?

Accessibility means designing products and experiences so people with different abilities can perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with them effectively.

Ask yourself:

Can people with different ways of seeing, hearing, moving, or processing information successfully interact with what we're building?

Creating inclusive products requires accessibility to be considered from the beginning. It isn't just a value to consider at the end of development; it should be part of the design and development process from the start.

Why does accessibility matter?

Accessibility isn't about designing for a separate group of people. It's about reducing barriers that can affect people at different points in our lives. We may become ill, get injured, or grow older and experience changes in our abilities that make accessibility more important to us.

It also matters when a family member, friend, or neighbor needs help accessing a service, paying a bill, or simply getting an app to do what they need it to do.

It's an essential practice that helps us build products with equal access in mind. We all need support in one way or another at different points in our lives, which is why accessibility should be an important part of the development process. We need to not only build for users without disabilities, but meet every user where they are.

How can we test accessibility?

From a QA perspective, I find accessibility testing is more effective when you understand the underlying principles rather than simply following a list of test cases. This user-focused approach extends beyond accessibility; understanding how people experience and interact with the products we test can help us identify opportunities to improve the QA experience itself. These principles give us a mental model we can apply across different interfaces and situations.

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are a widely adopted set of accessibility recommendations developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). For accessibility testing, WCAG 2.2 provides us with a good basis for understanding what to test and why.

The four POUR principles

There are four distinct WCAG principles to keep in mind to help guide your testing:

1. Perceivable

Can the user perceive the information in the UI?

QA focus: Ensure text is readable and states are clearly defined through appropriate sensory channels where applicable (e.g. visual and audible).

Examples: Insufficient color contrast can make text difficult to read for someone with low vision.

Likewise, relying only on a sound effect to communicate an important game state can exclude players who cannot hear it.

2. Operable

Can the user operate the interface?

QA focus: Can users complete interactions using the input methods supported by the product? Keyboard-only, touch, and controller users can navigate your interface and complete its interactions.

Examples: Touch targets are too small causing difficulties for someone with limited motor control to hit the correct button.

A button can be clicked with a mouse but cannot be reached or activated using the keyboard.

3. Understandable

Can the user understand the interface and how it behaves?

QA focus: Are labels, instructions, feedback, and interactions clear, consistent, and predictable?

Example: A connection failure tells the user what went wrong but provides no indication of what they should do next (e.g. Connection lost. Reconnect to continue.).

4. Robust

Will the content work reliably across different user agents and technologies?

QA focus: Can browsers, assistive technologies, and other user agents reliably interpret the content, controls, and their current states?

Example: A button looks correct visually, but its name, role, or state isn't exposed programmatically, preventing a screen reader from identifying or operating it correctly.

Accessibility through a QA lens

Accessibility is an ever-evolving discipline as new technologies and methods emerge to support a wider range of users across our games and services. As such, it's become an increasingly important consideration for every product development team. To help ensure accessibility standards are met, QA has a responsibility to evaluate both the user's experience and the underlying implementation. When accessibility issues are found, clearly communicating the problem is just as important as identifying it.

A good accessibility implementation gives users multiple ways to perceive information, supports the input methods they need to operate the interface, uses clear and predictable interactions, and remains compatible with the technologies they rely on.

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