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Automated website accessibility testing can be a very useful process. It often reveals many issues which would take a human tester many times longer to uncover. It’s a bit like using a spell / grammar checker on a long article. But, just as a human editor is essential in any serious writing, hands on testing essential in any serious usability testing effort for the handicapped. Below are the steps we take beyond automated accessibility tests.

Consultation – Understanding Your Accessibility Goals What are your reasons for conducting accessibility testing? What, exactly, do you hope to achieve? Goals may range from just making sure that the basics are covered to wanting to win awards for accessible site design. We help you define your expectations and turn them into our deliverables.

Planning and Scripting To reach your goals you need a plan. This includes both high level planning like which screen readers do you want used, how many test experts do you want to run the scripts, and should all pages be tested or just some representative ones? It also includes specific sets of steps taken to test conduct tests, known as test scripts.

Recruiting We will test your web presence with visually impaired specialists who are familiar with both good and bad web design from their own daily web use. They are also experts at using screen reader technologies. If your test plan calls for it we will also recruit visually impaired target audience testers – people who represent your potential clients. These will not be web experts – they will be ordinary web users.

Conducting the Accessibility and Usability Tests For most websites, accessibility and usability testing is conducted over a one to two week period. However, we never test with multiple testers concurrently so depending on a client’s needs, the testing phase can be a bit shorter or significantly longer. After the data from each tester has been compiled and they have written their reports, all testers meet to discuss their findings.

Reporting We provide reporting on each phase of the project. There is a Goals report which the client signs off on before moving on to the Planning phase. The Test Plan and any Scripts are presented for sign-off prior to actual testing. There can, on client request, be a Recruiting report. And of course, the final reports in which we detail the objective results of testing, the subjective comments of the testers, and any additional insights from the final meeting. Both positive and negative issues are reported on. And there is practical advice on how to improve any negative issues.

Re-Testing and Reporting Following any work on the website to resolve accessibility issues reported on, we can retest the website. This is a recommended but optional phase and can be a re-running of all previous tests and scripts or simply a verification test to see that recommendations were implemented successfully. Reporting on this phase depends on the scope of testing.

Nik Page has been working in website and user interface testing for over 10 years.

In 2005 he launched Page Accessibility Labs (PAL) in order to broaden the world of possibility for handicapped web users. PAL utilizes the unique skills and experiences of visually impaired test specialists to ensure complete test coverage.

PAL specializes in web accessibility and usability testing.