Adding Asqatasun to the 10 a11y testing tools in Testaro

English
1

Asqatasun, or perhaps its analyzer component, seems like a candidate for addition to the 10 tools currently integrated by Testaro, an open-source application for ensemble testing of web accessibility sponsored by CVS Health.

However, my first impression is that it would be a complex task to integrate Asqatasun into Testaro, and the benefit would not suffice to justify the effort. The main reasons for this impression are:

  1. The technologies used by Asqatasun differ substantially from the tools currently used by Testaro, which typically are Node.js packages published at NPM.
  2. Not many of the tests in Asqatasun that could be used by Testaro add novel discoveries to those of existing tests.

The tests that Testaro could use are those that have page scope, are performed, are decidable, and do not depend on markers. Of those, it appears to me that these rules have tests which could, in principle, add novel discoveries:

  • 2.2.1
  • 8.8.1
  • 10.1.1
  • 10.1.2
  • 10.4.1
  • 13.1.2

Of these, it appears that the 2.2.1 relevance criteria are not yet mature, and it is not clear to me how text languages are detected for 8.8.1.

My guess is that it would be easier to reimplement at least some of these rules in Node.js directly in the testaro tool than to integrate Asqatasun into Testaro.

But my familiarity with Asqatasun is not deep. I would be grateful for opinions on this from members of this forum.

2

Hi @JonathanRPool and welcome to the forum.

Each tool has its specificities, and thus putting them all in a single place may be complicated. Here are the two strong motivations that drive us for Asqatasun:

  • be 200% reliable. Only present results that we’re absolutly sure, if not we place the result as a “pre-qualified”, a result type we introduced to help humain save time while still being confident with the tool.
  • as we are French, we do not use WCAG directly but the French “application method” called RGAA (sorry only in French, the government did not published a translation). For your information, the legal texts in France require to use RGAA. Correspondances do exist between RGAA and WCAG (unfold a criteria, it is at the bottom), but it is hardly a one-to-one relationship.

Hope this helps