Get familiar with the UI and explore the layout.
Navigate through the UI by using single-finger swipe gestures. Use left or right swipes to move between items, and up or down swipes to change the category of items being navigated. Categories include all items, links, tables, headers, and so on. Navigating with single-finger swipe gestures is similar to navigating with Caps Lock + Arrow.
Use tab gestures to navigate through focusable elements. A three-finger swipe to the right or left is the same as navigating with Tab and Shift + Tab on a keyboard.
Spatially investigate the UI with a single finger. Drag a single finger up and down, or left and right, to have Narrator read the items under your finger. You can use the mouse as an alternative because it uses the same hit-testing logic as dragging a single finger.
Read the entire window and all its contents with a three finger swipe up. This is equivalent to using Caps Lock + W.
If there is important UI that you cannot reach, you may have an accessibility issue.
Interact with a control to test its primary and secondary actions, and its scrolling behavior.
Primary actions include things like activating a button, placing a text caret, and setting focus to the control. Secondary actions include actions such as selecting a list item or expanding a button that offers multiple options.
To test a primary action: Double tap, or press with one finger and tap with another.
To test a secondary action: Triple tap, or press with one finger and double tap with another.
To test scrolling behavior: Use two-finger swipes to scroll in the desired direction.
Some controls provide additional actions. To display the full list, enter a single four-finger tap.
If a control responds to the mouse or keyboard but does not respond to a primary or secondary touch interaction, the control might need to implement additional UI Automation control patterns.
You should also consider using the AccScope tool to test Narrator accessibility scenarios with your app. The AccScope tool topic describes how to configure AccScope to test Narrator scenarios.
Examine the UI Automation representation for your app
Several of the UI Automation testing tools mentioned previously provide a way to view your app in a way that deliberately does not consider what the app looks like, and instead represents the app as a structure of UI Automation elements. This is how UI Automation clients, mainly assistive technologies, will be interacting with your app in accessibility scenarios.
The AccScope tool provides a particularly interesting view of your app because you can see the UI Automation elements either as a visual representation or as a list. If you use the visualization, you can drill down into the parts in a way that you'll be able to correlate with the visual appearance of your app's UI. You can even test the accessibility of your earliest UI prototypes before you've assigned all the logic to the UI, making sure that both the visual interaction and accessibility-scenario navigation for your app is in balance.
One aspect that you can test is whether there are elements appearing in the UI Automation element view that you don't want to appear there. If you find elements you want to omit from the view, or conversely if there are elements missing, you can use the AutomationProperties.AccessibilityView XAML attached property to adjust how XAML controls appear in accessibility views. After you've looked at the basic accessibility views, this is also a good opportunity to recheck your tab sequences or spatial navigation as enabled by arrow keys to make sure users can reach each of the parts that are interactive and exposed in the control view.
Related topics