TL;DR
Internet Speed at a Glance is by far the most accessible speed test.
Color blindness, all top 10 speed tests are fine.
Low vision, use Internet Speed at a Glance or M-Lab.
Blind, use Internet Speed at a Glance.
Physical (Motor/mobility) - Mouse, use Internet Speed at a Glance or M-Lab.
Physical (Motor/mobility) - Keyboard, use Cloudflare or Internet Speed at a Glance.
Cognitive, use Internet Speed at a Glance.
Web accessibility
In general, web accessibility aims to make a website usable for people with disabilities.
For most websites and for speed tests, more often than not, the relevant disabilities are:
- Visual
- Color blindness
- Low vision
- Blindness
- Physical (Motor/mobility) e.g.
- Tremors
- Loss of fine muscle control
- Cognitive
Various accessibility tests have been performed.
The main findings of all tests are grouped by disability.
Color blindness
All speed tests of the speed test top 10 are tested on the 8 types of color blindness (protanopia, protanomaly, deuteranopia, deuteranomaly, tritanopia, tritanomaly, achromatopsia and achromatomaly).
No usability issues were found, in the color blindness test, for all types of color blindness (light and dark mode).
Low vision
Users with poor eyesight will benefit from websites with a high-contrast color scheme that can be zoomed in.
The following speed tests of the speed test top 10 meet both conditions:
Blindness
Blind users use best Internet Speed at a Glance this speed test support screen readers the best.
When you are blind a screen reader is essential. To guide screen readers the document language is used. There are 5 speed tests in the top 10 with the document language set. These speed tests are: Internet Speed at a Glance, Ookla Speedtest, Meter.net, SpeedOf.me and TestMy.net.
Screen readers use the alternative texts for images. So if images are used, it is important that these images have meaningful alternative texts.
M-Lab is the most accessible speed test in terms of images. This is because M-Lab does not use images at all. Second best is Internet Speed at a Glance, this speed test has provided all images with meaningful alternative texts.
Another problem for screen readers are empty links. Good speed tests without empty links are: Google Fiber, Internet Speed at a Glance, M-Lab, SpeedOf.me, SpeedSmart and TestMy.net.
A similar problem is empty buttons. For most speed tests this isn't an issue. Google Fiber is the only speed test in the speed test top 10 with empty buttons.
For screen reader users the option to skip links is a relevant feature. However two speed tests of the speed test top 10 does not need the option to skip links. These speed tests are Cloudflare and Internet Speed at a Glance. The other keyboard friendly speed tests should have this option, but don't offer the ability to skip links.
Screen readers can be considered a specific category of Internet browsers. They interpret the HTML layout of the page. Precisely because screen readers are less known, it is extremely useful if the HTML code is error-free.
Not only error-free HTML code, using semantic HTML also helps screen readers interpret the web page correctly. The fewer div and span elements, the better.
Ultimately, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. That's why we tested how well speed tests can be used with a screen reader. The result will not surprise you. Only Internet Speed at a Glance can be used with a screen reader.
Physical (Motor/mobility)
Using the mouse when you have physcial (motor/mobility) problems is often hard. A sufficiently large clickable area makes it easier to click on the desired link.
The test Speed tests and their link areas show that two speed tests of the top 10 have links with a target size that conforms to the WCAG standard.
These speed test are Internet Speed at a Glance and M-Lab.
Forms can contain elements such as checkboxes and radio buttons with a small clickable area. This clickable area can be enlarged by using form input labels. Testing for the presence of form input labels indicates that almost all speed tests pass.
Of the speed test top 10, only SpeedOf.me and Fast are missing form input labels.
When using the keyboard it is essential to see which element is currently in focus. Half of the top 10 speed tests provides a clear visual indication of the current focus without additional comments. Cloudflare, Google Fiber, Internet Speed at a Glance, Meter.net and Ookla Speedtest.
When trying to start (and restart) the speed tests in the keyboard friendly speed test test it becomes clear that the following speed tests of the speed test top 10 are keyboard friendly:
Cognitive
There are many factors that helps cognitive accessibility. Things that help minimize the cognitive load are for example:
- easily-understood content
- minimizing distractions, avoid visual clutter
- use a standard design (Jakob's Law of Internet User Experience)
- consistent web page layout and navigation
- incorporating familiar elements, like blue underlined links
- offload tasks (don't let me think)
Speaking of links, creating correct links is hard.
- Accessibility can be problematic if links are made to inaccessible documents
Research shows that none of the top 10 speed tests link to inaccessible documents - Accessibility can be problematic if links use ambiguous link texts
There are 8 out of 28 speed tests with ambiguous link texts. Of the top 10 speed tests, TestMy.net, SpeedSmart and Fast have one or more ambiguous link texts - Accessibility can be problematic if links to different resources use the same descreptive text
Research shows that no speed test uses the same link text for different links
Based on these tests, we conclude that these tests of the speed test top 10 have the best cognitive accessibility:
Too many links also hinders cognitive load. Of the top 10 speed tests, only Ookla's Speedtest has too many links.
Looking at other things that help reduce cognitive load, you might look at using headers. You would think that the correct use of headers applies to all speed tests. None of that. Only Internet Speed at a Glance uses headers correctly.
To see what the cognitive load is of a speed test, we looked at the amount of clutter. What seems? Most speed tests contain quite a bit of clutter.
Only Fast, Google Fiber, Internet Speed at a Glance and M-Lab have a high clutter-free score.
Based on all tests mentione above, Internet Speed at a Glance is likely to have the lowest cognitive load.
Online accessibility test tools
There are a few online accessibility test tools. All these tools test a lot of accessibility aspects but neither test all aspects.
- According to Achecker there are 3 speed tests without known problems with the WCAG 2.0 (Level AA) guidelines. These speed tests are: Internet Speed at a Glance, Ookla Speedtest and Xfinity xFi Speed Test
- Tingtun's pagecheck indicates that only Internet Speed at a Glance, LibreSpeed and Ookla Speedtest have a score of 100 out of 100
- Based on WAVE's web accessibility evaluation of speed tests the following speed tests have no automatically detected errors: Comparitech, Internet Speed at a Glance and SpeedCheck.
Internet Speed at a Glance is the only speed test where all automatic accessibility checks (Achecker, Tingtun and WAVE) find no accessibility problems at all.
This is consistent with the findings from our manual testing.
So it seems that combining multiple accessibility tests gives a good idea of whether a web page is actually accessible.