Usability and Accessibility Testing
Software can pass every functional check and still lose a customer who could not find the button, understand the error, or navigate without a mouse. GullySystem reviews flows, wording and accessibility so more visitors complete their task.
Working Correctly Is Not the Same as Usable
A form that saves data correctly can still be abandoned if the required fields are unclear, the error appears far from the field that caused it, or the confirm button looks identical to the cancel one. None of this shows up in a functional test, because functional testing asks whether the software does what it should, not whether a person under time pressure can tell what to do next.
What Usability Review Covers
- Whether error messages say what went wrong and what to do about it, rather than a generic failure notice
- Whether the next step in a multi-step flow is obvious without instructions
- Whether destructive actions like delete or cancel require a clear confirmation
- Whether labels and terminology match how your actual customers describe things, not internal team language
What Accessibility Review Covers
Keyboard Navigation
Whether every action reachable with a mouse can also be reached and operated using only a keyboard.
Screen-Reader Behaviour
Whether images, buttons and form fields are labelled so a screen reader describes them meaningfully rather than staying silent.
Colour and Contrast
Whether text and important controls remain readable for users with low vision or colour blindness.
Focus and Structure
Whether headings and page structure let a user relying on assistive technology understand and skip through the page logically.
A Government Tender Portal, as an Example
A firm bidding on public contracts is required to meet accessibility standards on its submission portal. Testing works through the entire document-upload flow using only a keyboard and a screen reader, checks that error messages on a rejected file format are actually announced rather than only shown visually, and confirms colour is never the only way a required field is marked.
Frequently asked questions
Is this the same as a design review?
No. A design review judges visual style and brand consistency. Usability testing judges whether a real user can complete a task without confusion, and accessibility testing judges whether people using assistive technology can use the software at all — both are about function, not appearance.
Do you test against a specific accessibility standard?
Yes, against the internationally recognised web accessibility guidelines, applied to the level appropriate to your sector and any obligation you are under, such as a public-sector or government-facing requirement.
Do you use actual assistive technology during testing?
Yes. Keyboard-only navigation and screen-reader software are used directly rather than judged from a checklist alone, because some failures — a button a screen reader announces as unlabelled, a focus order that jumps illogically — only appear when the tool is actually used.
What drives the cost of usability and accessibility testing?
How many distinct flows and page templates are in scope, whether a formal accessibility audit against a named standard is required, and how many user roles or device types the review needs to cover.
What decides how long usability and accessibility testing takes?
The number of flows and templates being reviewed, and how many issues the first pass surfaces, since some findings require a second look after a fix to confirm the underlying pattern was actually corrected across the site.
Do you fix the issues you find?
Our default role is to find and document them with enough detail — the flow, the standard it fails against, and a suggested correction — for your developers or designers to act on. We can take on the fixes themselves under a separate scope if you would rather one team handled both.
Tell us what you need.
Send a short brief and one of our engineers will come back to you — usually the same day.
- No obligation
- We reply the same working day
- Your details stay private