Why Accessibility Testing is Important

Accessibility testing has great importance and relevance for all portals or websites. Its usage has often been questioned, which is not right in my opinion. Any portal or website should have a long-term vision for its audience. Adding capabilities or corrections for accessibility much later increases the cost of new work. Hence, it should be a default consideration when building a portal or website.

While the design and development have been using a lot of accessibility standards as part of their core work, testing has been far behind in accepting and embracing Accessibility Testing as a form of testing for portals or websites unless requested. The emergence of standard tools have made it easier to include this type of testing as part of your testing cycles. One such tool that I had performed a POC and later used for a major Retail customer is WAVE – Web Accessibility and Evaluation Tool.

WAVE

The WAVE tool is offered as a plugin extension for Chrome and Firefox. It also further simplifies by providing the option to evaluate the accessibility readiness of your site using WCAG 2.0A, WCAG 2.0AA, or Section 508 standards. The tool provides quick and easy reports that can be utilized to compare with the standards needed by your customer to follow.

The reports can be used to report issues not following Accessibility standards. Alternatively, after maturing or looking at the reports, the development team can install the plugin extension to ensure that the Accessibility standards are taken care of right at the development stage. Accessibility related issues found later in the development cycle increase the risk of involving additional UI/UX, design, and development work. Hence, the earlier use of such a simple tool will prove beneficial to the Solution being offered.

For details and accessing the plugin extension, visit https://wave.webaim.org/extension/

I saw this at a restaurant and could immediately relate it to IT industry.

If you are not HAPPY with your PRODUCT, DON’T Put it On the PLATE !!

Quality is a collective responsibility. Everybody from Pre-Sales to Implementation have equal accountability.
But the core lies with the Technology Team –
As a Business Consultant, if you are not happy with your requirements, why and how can you complete it?
As a Technical Consultant, if you are not happy with your code, why and how can you push the code?
As a Testing Consultant, if you are not happy with your test results, why and how can you pass the test?

One should not deliver only good ingredients, they should also deliver a good product.
Do you agree?

Technology is advancing daily. Every industry makes an effort to keep up with the advancement and so does the Software Testing industry. This industry did see growth in terms of Automated testing, Exploratory testing, Testing in Digital, Testing with Algorithms, and many more with one of the latest buzz word – Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Testing.

The average spend for Testing in a medium to large IT organization is hardly 10% – 13%* of overall IT spend (maybe little more or less) and lesser in smaller organizations. But with the introduction of AI in the testing of software systems of records or systems of engagement, are we just adding cost to the whole equation? Well, of course, you can add a feather in your hat too. But does it solve the problem statement for your customer?

Let’s look at its value. What is AI in Testing? Is it Planning and Diagnosis? And a lot more, of course, I heard that! So what is the underlying system to which you are applying AI testing? It is the same system of record or engagement, but we recommend intelligent testing practices that can lower down the cost of testing and improve production stability. But do you know what type of AI models are relevant to such systems? If not, let’s redefine an AI model to suit the ear and make it look “Artificially Intelligent”. That sounds advanced!!

So is AI in testing, intelligent or artificial? Well, maybe in certain type of industries where research is done or much others, yes. But for all other industries – Understand the requirements and write those test cases intelligent and not artificial.

Do you have similar questions? Or maybe Answers.

*From discussions with some IT Leaders, not from any source