Application of Traditional Software Testing Methodologies to Web Accessibility
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The document discusses various methods for testing the accessibility of web applications, including user testing, automated validation, auditing, and traditional software testing. It provides details on how each method can be used to test accessibility, as well as potential issues and limitations. The key message is that accessibility can be improved by treating it as one of many quality metrics and applying traditional software testing methods throughout the development life cycle.
Application of Traditional Software Testing Methodologies to Web Accessibility
- 1. Cynthia C. Shelly, Microsoft Mike Barta, University of Washington
- 2. 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
- 3. User Testing Automated Validation Auditing Traditional Software Testing?
- 4. 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
- 5. 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
- 6. 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.)
- 7. 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
- 8. 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
- 9. 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
- 10. 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
- 11. 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
- 12. 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