We're thrilled to be recognized by Gartner in their latest Market Guide for Digital Accessibility! This is a huge milestone for us and underscores the growing importance of making digital inclusivity a core part of quality engineering. As an AI-powered testing solution, we're proud to be at the forefront of this movement, offering automated accessibility testing as a standard feature within our unified platform.
Our commitment to accessibility isn't new. Several years ago, our co-founder, Dan Belcher, recognized the urgent need to embed accessibility testing directly into the DevOps workflow. "Accessibility is a critical area of quality, as well as an ethical concern that impacts every company - and particularly those with public-facing applications or websites," he often says. We're honored that Gartner's analysis validates this early vision, and we hope it inspires the entire industry to make accessibility testing the norm, not the exception.
We've already seen the transformative power of mabl’s integrated accessibility testing with customers like major e-commerce brands. They've been able to dramatically scale their automated testing efforts with mabl, catching potential accessibility issues early in the development cycle. This proactive approach ensures a more inclusive experience for all their customers, while also reducing the time and cost of fixing issues later on.
Why We Invest in Accessibility (and Why Businesses Should Care)
Investing in automated web accessibility testing is essential for creating inclusive digital experiences, especially for people with disabilities. An estimated 16% of the global population lives with some form of disability, and that number is constantly increasing. As more people face accessibility challenges, it's crucial to design digital spaces that cater to everyone's needs. Prioritizing accessibility not only boosts user experience for all but also broadens your audience and demonstrates a tangible commitment to inclusion. Ultimately, ensuring everyone can use your products creates a better, more welcoming digital world.
Nevertheless, the current state of digital accessibility reveals a significant gap between good intentions and adequate implementation. Companies need a more proactive, shift-left approach to automated accessibility testing and issue prioritization to prevent the accumulation of “accessibility debt”.
Since 2022, mabl has been on a mission to empower companies to improve web accessibility through automated accessibility testing. Our low-code accessibility offering enables teams to seamlessly integrate accessibility into their existing testing workflows, ensuring more efficient delivery, and catching accessibility bugs before they reach production.
The mabl Difference: How We're Tackling Accessibility Challenges
Testing teams often grapple with the fragmented nature and high costs associated with using various tools for web accessibility testing along with functional and non-functional testing. This disjointed approach often leads to last-minute scrambles to rectify issues before releases, or worse, the constant threat of accessibility issues reaching production. Mabl provides a cohesive solution by offering a unified platform that caters to both functional and non-functional testing requirements. By seamlessly integrating accessibility testing into existing functional UI tests, teams can streamline their processes, avoid tool overload, and ensure smoother testing workflows.
When running automated accessibility tests in mabl, you can seamlessly integrate these non-functional tests directly into your preferred workflow. With our CI/CD integrations, engineers can quickly identify and address accessibility issues, keeping pace with agile development and ensuring smoother, faster fixes.
Teams also benefit from mabl’s AI-powered testing capabilities, which enable faster test creation and higher test reliability with auto-healing, minimizing the time it takes to create test coverage for the entire UI surface of applications as well as the time it takes to keep test coverage up-to-date.
"Shift-Left" Done Right: The Power of Early Accessibility Testing
Imagine this: your team is about to ship a major update to one of your design system’ components that’s widely used across your application. Unbeknownst to anyone, an accessibility issue has been accidentally introduced. Without early detection this small issue could snowball into a widespread problem and have a huge impact on your application, impacting countless users and requiring costly, time-consuming fixes.
This is where mabl’s “shift-left” approach to accessibility testing shines. By adding accessibility checks directly to your existing end-to-end UI tests triggered by your CI/CD pipeline, your engineering team will be able to catch and fix that bug early on, during routing testing, before it reaches production and impacts customers.
This proactive approach not only saves your team from scrambling to fix issues after the fact but also fosters a culture of accessibility awareness throughout the development process. With mabl, accessibility isn’t an afterthought: it’s a core component of quality engineering from day one, saving time and resources.
How It Works: Making Accessibility Testing Effortless
Mabl, as a low-code first platform, is designed to make accessibility testing a natural part of your testing process. Here's how our platform empowers your team to build inclusive experiences:
Adding Accessibility Checks to Existing Tests
No need to reinvent the wheel. With mabl, you can easily add accessibility checks to your existing UI tests. This means you can leverage your current test coverage and workflows, minimizing disruption while maximizing the value of your testing efforts. To add a new accessibility test, simply add an accessibility step to it. Customize the test by including or excluding specific WCAG rules and searching for acceptance criteria like WCAG 2.1 AA or Section 508, or you can use our default settings.
Actionable Insights and Prioritization
Mabl’s accessibility dashboard provides a comprehensive overview of your accessibility test results. You can track your progress over time, set accessibility goals, and prioritize the most critical issues. This data-driven approach allows you to focus on high-impact fixes first, ensuring continuous improvement toward a more accessible product.
Shift-Left with Ease
Mabl makes it simple to shift accessibility testing left, catching issues early in the development cycle when they're easier and less expensive to fix. Run tests on demand, integrate with your CI/CD pipelines for automated checks, or even empower developers to run tests directly from the command line using our CLI.
Watch the short demo below to see this in action.
Your Path to Accessible Excellence Starts Here
We're incredibly proud to be recognized by Gartner for our leadership in integrating accessibility testing into the mainstream. This acknowledgment reinforces our belief that accessibility is not just a compliance issue, but a fundamental aspect of quality engineering.
As the digital world continues to evolve, so does the need for inclusive design. By incorporating accessibility testing early and often, you can ensure that your digital experiences reach the widest possible audience, fostering a more equitable and welcoming online environment.
Are you ready to transform your approach to accessibility testing? Experience firsthand how mabl empowers your team to build more inclusive products. Start your free 14-day trial today and unlock the full potential of your application. Let's build a better web, together.
