Accessibility Testing for Agile Teams: How to Fit It into Your Sprint

Agile teams move fast — but accessibility issues can move faster. Every spring, every release, every line of code has the potential to introduce new accessibility barriers for users with disabilities. Without a strategy for regular accessibility testing, even well-intentioned teams can end up pushing inaccessible experiences that violate standards like the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the European Accessibility Act (EAA), and other non-discrimination laws.

The good news? Accessibility doesn’t have to slow your development team down. When baked into your Agile processes, it can lead to cleaner code, stronger UX, and faster iteration over time.

Below, we’ll explore how Agile teams can make accessibility testing a natural (and efficient) part of their workflow — and why doing so is essential for building accessible, legally compliant digital content.

Why Accessibility Testing Should Be in Every Sprint

If you’re making the case for building accessibility into your development process, here’s the bottom line: Accessible design is simply good design. 

You want your digital products to be robust, operable, and predictable — and to work reliably for the widest possible audience. That includes people with disabilities who rely on assistive technologies like screen readers or voice navigation to interact with your site or app. When your product meets accessibility standards — especially WCAG — it’s not just a better user experience for everyone; it’s also critical for complying with laws like the ADA, the EAA, and more. That’s why accessibility testing should be part of every sprint: it helps you identify and fix issues early, before they impact your users and result in costly rework down the line.

Plus, by incorporating accessible design into your Agile sprints, you can fix issues before they impact real users. You write cleaner code and markup, which makes future updates and bug fixes much easier to roll out. 

A few facts to consider: 

• Your audience includes people with disabilities. The U.S. disability community controls an estimated $490 billion in annual disposable income, and an estimated 1 in 4 U.S. adults has at least one disability; you can’t afford to ignore those users. 

• Accessibility features extend to all users. Captions, for example, are essential for users with hearing disabilities; accurate captions can also increase viewership for videos, improve brand recall, and provide viewers with more ways to engage with content.

• Fixes cost more when barriers are part of an official release. One study found that fixing a usability issue after a product release can consume 100 times the development resources as compared to fixing the issue before the product release.

• Accessibility is a legal requirement. In the U.S., most businesses, non-profits, and government agencies must present an equitable experience to users with disabilities to comply with the ADA, Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, and state-level laws like California’s Unruh Act. Internationally, dozens of laws require conformance with WCAG.

Of course, Agile development prioritizes speed — and many teams ignore accessibility out of concerns that WCAG conformance will lead to slower sprints.

But with the right approach, agile accessibility testing can actually speed up development and deployment. Let’s look at ways that you can start building an effective testing process for your agile workflows.

A stylized web browser is shown with error symbols.

When and Where Does Accessibility Testing Fit in the Agile Lifecycle?

Accessibility is a mindset and not a project. It should be incorporated into every phase of development — not tacked on as an additional feature or assigned to a single team member. 

More simply, you should never tell a developer to “make sure that everything is accessible" before a rollout. Unfortunately, this is where many teams make mistakes. Instead of treating digital accessibility as a checkbox for compliance, build it into every part of the Agile lifecycle:

Design

Accessible development starts with accessible design. Designers should follow established best practices to create mockups and wireframes that are accessible from the start. That includes:

• Checking text for sufficient color contrast. Low-contrast text can be difficult or impossible to read; all color schemes should be tested to ensure they meet WCAG’s recommendation of a 4.5:1 contrast ratio for normal text. Color contrast tools can help with this.

• Ensuring interactive elements are clearly identifiable. This can be an especially significant issue with “flat" and “soft" user interfaces, which may have buttons and other elements that don’t stand out against the background. 

• Avoiding color alone to convey information. For example, avoid instructions like “click the green button,” since users who are colorblind or using screen readers may not be able to tell which button you mean. Similarly, links should be visually distinguishable in more than one way — such as using underlines in addition to color — so all users can identify them reliably. 

• Designing intuitive, predictable layouts. Users should be able to understand how each page operates, and navigational elements should be consistent from page to page.  

By integrating accessibility considerations into the fundamental UI/UX patterns, teams can prevent costly and time-consuming fixes later in development. This is how accessibility actually saves time during a sprint — but only when prioritized early.

Development

Once the design is finalized, developers translate the accessible wireframes into functional code. Building an accessible product requires a commitment to clean, standards-based development from the ground up.

Key accessibility best practices for developers include:

• Writing semantic HTML. Developers should use HTML elements according to their intended purpose and avoid relying too heavily on non-semantic elements (such as <div> and <span>). Screen readers and other assistive technologies rely on a logical document structure to interpret content, and native HTML provides that structure.

• Use ARIA attributes correctly and sparingly. When creating complex user interface components that lack a native HTML equivalent, Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) can bridge the gap. However, developers must use ARIA carefully, as incorrect implementation can create more barriers than it solves; no ARIA is better than bad ARIA.

• Ensuring full keyboard accessibility. All interactive elements must be reachable and operable using only keyboard keys, including Tab, Shift+Tab, Enter, and other standard keyboard commands or shortcuts. A visible focus indicator is crucial so keyboard users can always tell which element is currently active.

• Testing regularly with automated accessibility tools. Automated tools aren’t perfect, but they’re excellent for detecting common issues at scale. When used during development, automation can prevent barriers from impacting real users.

Clean, semantic code is not only more accessible but also easier for teams to test, maintain, and expand upon in future sprints. 

Sprint Testing

Testing should be a planned activity within every sprint. A comprehensive testing strategy verifies both the technical compliance and the practical usability of new features.

Testing should include both of the following:

• Automated accessibility checks. Automated tools can be integrated directly into the development pipeline to scan for WCAG violations. While automation isn’t perfect, it’s effective for identifying issues like code syntax errors or missing image alt text.

• Manual spot-checks and user testing. Automation alone can’t tell how accessible the user experience is — nor can it catch all accessibility issues. Expert testing is necessary to check for more complex accessibility issues, including logical keyboard navigation, a logical reading order for screen readers, quality of alt text, and overall ease of use.

By pairing the speed of automation with expert reviews, teams can find and fix a more broad range of accessibility barriers before the feature is released.

Backlog Grooming 

For accessibility to be a consistent priority, it must be formally embedded in the team's workflow during backlog grooming and sprint planning (we’ll discuss sprint planning in a moment). This prevents accessibility from being pushed aside when project deadlines are tight.

This is primarily accomplished by:

• Defining accessibility acceptance criteria. For each relevant user story, the team should write specific, testable accessibility requirements. For example, a criterion for a new web form might state, "All form fields must have a programmatically associated label.”

• Including accessibility in the "Definition of Done." A user story should not be considered complete or "done" until it satisfies its accessibility acceptance criteria. 

Treating accessibility as a formal requirement in every user story ensures it is properly planned, scoped, and resourced throughout the Agile lifecycle. Accessibility becomes a non-negotiable aspect of quality — just like any other functional requirement.

How to Build Accessibility into Sprint Planning

Weaving accessibility into your sprint planning can prevent your accessibility debt from growing. Build specific accessibility checkpoints into your workflow to make inclusive design a practical and measurable outcome of every development cycle.

Some tips:

• Add accessibility acceptance criteria to user stories. Just as a story has criteria for functionality, it should also have specific, testable requirements for accessibility. For example, a story about a new video player should include criteria like "The player must be fully operable via keyboard" and "accurate, user-activated closed captions must be available."

• Include accessibility tasks in the Definition of Done (DoD). Your team's DoD is the ultimate checklist that determines when work is complete. Adding a checkpoint like "passes all automated and manual accessibility tests" gives developers a concrete target and prevents stories from being closed while still containing known barriers.

• Timebox accessibility testing. Effective sprint planning involves allocating specific time for all required tasks. Teams should estimate and set aside time for both automated accessibility testing and expert testing in the same way they do for other quality assurance activities.

• Treat accessibility bugs like any other defect. When accessibility issues are found, they should be logged, prioritized, and fixed with the same urgency as other bugs. 

An accessibility symbol, with concentric circles surrounding it.

Who Owns Accessibility in Agile Teams?

If there’s one thing to take away from this post, it’s this: Every member of your team should treat accessibility as a core principle. You cannot assign accessibility compliance to a single person — it’s as unrealistic as expecting a single developer to guarantee perfect code across an entire product.

But while every individual has a role to play, it’s a good idea to identify a digital accessibility champion who can advocate for the best practices at each step. Depending on the size of your team, you might have several champions for each project stage.

Here’s how digital accessibility champions across roles can make an impact:

• Designers: Designers can advocate for and implement accessible user interface/user experience (UI/UX) patterns from the beginning of the creative process. They can ensure that color-pairs meet WCAG’s requirements for color contrast, for example, and that responsive elements remain readable and operable on smaller screens.

• Developers: Developer champions can advocate for clean, semantic code that is inherently accessible. They can also take the lead in setting up automation tools to catch accessibility issues early.

• Testers: In a quality assurance role, champions can ensure that the product undergoes thorough manual testing using screen readers and other assistive technology. This ensures that the final product is truly navigable and functional for users of assistive technologies.

• Product Owners: Owners are responsible for prioritizing accessibility tasks and accurately scoping the work required. They make sure that accessibility is treated as an essential feature, not an afterthought.

Your accessibility partner should help your team build a working knowledge of WCAG and understand how AT functions. Expert guidance — along with case-appropriate testing tools — can make the process much easier.

Tools that Make Accessibility Testing in Sprints Easier

Beyond education, you’ll need software tools to build accessibility checks directly into Agile environments. Modern tool sets empower teams to find and fix barriers early, which saves significant time and resources down the line.

For example, AudioEye's Developer Tools are designed to integrate directly into the development lifecycle. With the Accessibility Testing SDK, teams can automatically scan for issues in pre-production environments, test individual components before they are added to a library, and get code-level feedback within their existing continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipeline. With AudioEye’s Developer Tools, teams can continuously monitor, update, and improve website accessibility — before it impacts users.

Build Accessibility into Every Sprint with AudioEye

You don’t need to overhaul your entire development process to start making meaningful progress toward accessibility — and you certainly don’t have to achieve perfect WCAG conformance overnight. The important thing is to take the first step. That could mean committing to accessible design principles, using simple tools to check your content for common issues, and publishing an accessibility statement if your product is live. These small, practical actions not only improve your product today but also lay the foundation for a sustainable, scalable accessibility practice as your team and your offerings grow.

As your team’s accessibility process evolves, you can build on those early efforts with more advanced solutions that help you scale and maintain compliance without slowing down development. That’s where partners like AudioEye can help. Our Accessibility Platform takes a three-pronged approach to accessibility, combining powerful automation, human-assisted AI technology, and testing during the development process. 

Plus, with AudioEye’s Developer Tools, you can test and fix more accessibility issues before they impact your customers.  This helps you protect your development velocity while building digital content that isn’t just compliant, but accessible and usable for all users.

Take the next step toward building a more accessible digital experience or agile workflow. Use our free website accessibility scanner to get instant feedback on your content, or schedule a demo to see how AudioEye can help your team build accessibility into every sprint.