This is probably one of the most difficult challenges facing us today; this being that we need to work extra hard to convince companies that when it comes to website testing we need to ensure that live or human testers are included in the testing process and not just automated tools.
It is all well and good to use these automated tools as they offer a solid indicator to whether or not websites are navigable, usable, and accessible. However nothing can really beat the input of the human tester.
Human testers and what I wish to emphasize is that we need to take advantage of the expertise and skills of testers with disabilities. Using sighted testers is not an alternative.
This is what I call the walk a mile in my shoes strategy. There is no way that a sighted user can be used to simulate the expertise and skills of a tester with a disability.
Too many companies continue to use automated tools and sighted users to carry out their testing process. Too many companies use the above as part of their simulation testing and I am often left at a loss to offer a plausible explanation as to why they continue to disregard the expertise of users with disabilities.
There is one piece of advice that I would like to offer and it is this: If companies are using automated tools and in house sighted testers in order to keep costs down by not hiring testers with disabilities it is not a good strategy and why? Because in the long run these companies will only be forced to pay more when they realize that at the end of the day their websites are not as usable, navigable, and accessible as they should be.
Just my two cents for today.