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Cynthia C. Shelly, Microsoft Mike Barta, University of Washington
Web Applications Are interactive applications first “Web” is an implementation detail History of the Web as a collection of
interconnected static documents obscures this
Accessibility is an aspect of software quality The same methods used to find security or
performance or functionality bugs can be used to find accessibility bugs
User TestingAutomated ValidationAuditing
Traditional Software Testing?
What is it End users Influence or validate design Focused on discoverability and ease of use
Types Usability Testing Beta Testing Reviews by end users outside the product
team Application to Accessibility
Testing with ‘real’ people with disabilities
Uses Understanding design issues How the product feels Interaction with a particular AT product▪ User who is comfortable using the AT product
Issues Isolating technical issues so developers can fix them Usability testing uses small samples of like users▪ Difficult to cover all disabilities▪ Difficult to get a group of users with same disability and AT
configuration Can be expensive, in time or money Beta testing and user reviews have response bias, skew
towards more technical users Need working code for AT interop testing, prototypes
less useful for accessibility user testing
What is it Static analysis of code looking for common
problems Done on markup, generally not on script
Types General purpose tools test against a
technology specification Product-specific tools test against the product
specification Application to Accessibility
Test against an accessibility standard (WCAG, 508, etc.)
Uses Quickly find common, known problems in markup Find regressions Spot trends, find areas where manual testing
resources would be best spent Issues
Many accessibility issues are difficult to automate
The issues that are easy to automate aren’t always the most important to test
General purpose tools have a lot of warnings and false postitives
Real bugs can get lost in the noise It’s a tool, it’s not testing
What is it Done on finished or mostly finished
product By experts not involved in development Combination of automated testing and
expert evaluation Measures conformance to a set standard
Application to Accessibility Expert evaluation against accessibility
standards
Uses Evaluates the state of a product at a given point in
time Useful for reporting Useful for development teams without the expertise
to do their own testing Issues
Measures quality, does not assure it Late in product cycle Limited ramp-up time Limited time to conduct audit Organizational dynamics can work against outside
auditors Difficult to convince organizations to fix technically
compliant but poorly accessible/usable sites
What is it Focus is on assuring a level of quality Types of testing typically done during the process of
developing software Discrete tools such as Unit, Functional, System,
Integration, Regression, etc. Procedural tools, such as exit criteria and design
validation The goal of testing is not to perform evaluations, but to pass them
Application to Accessibility Test accessibility as one of many metrics of software
quality Test the functional accessibility of an interactive
application Test at various architectural levels for the exposure of
information needed for accessibility
Uses Change the output on a quality measure Test throughout the software life cycle: requirements gathering,
design, coding, testing, release Isolate technical issues so developers can fix them Find issues early, and educate the team, to prevent issues Targeted: picking test cases most likely to uncover bugs Understand the most important bugs, based on the purpose of the
product Constant stream of information allows adjustments can be made
during the development process for the current release Work with the organizational dynamics and rhythm of the
business to impact organizational behavior with respect to quality metrics▪ Help managers plan for resource allocation to impact accessibility at various
points in the software life cycle▪ Raise the expertise of organization▪ Devote significant time to testing▪ Test accessibility the same way other quality metrics are tested▪ Leverage existing processes to reduce marginal cost
We can improve the accessibility of a Web application by treating accessibility the same as other quality metrics, and the application the same as other applications
Traditional Software Testing has a goal of changing the quality of a product, not just measuring it
There is much to be gained by applying the knowledge in the software testing field to web accessibility
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