Re: Automated and manual testing process

When the first draft in wcag 2.1 comes out I doubt anyone will be expert in all of it, straight away. It will take time for us to learn about new disability types and hpw they use the web, and/or disabilities and new technology.We might need to consider ourselves extern in some success criteria and not in others - for a while.


All the best

Lisa Seeman

LinkedIn, Twitter





---- On Mon, 30 Jan 2017 19:21:45 +0200 Gregg C Vanderheiden<greggvan@umd.edu> wrote ---- 

+1

Expert testing  is a much better term.      You need to understand what you are doing to get reliable test results. 


gregg


 Gregg C Vanderheiden
greggvan@umd.edu



 
 
On Jan 30, 2017, at 7:09 AM, Wilco Fiers <wilco.fiers@deque.com> wrote:

Hi everyone,

I don't particularly like the use of the phrase "manual testing". I much prefer "expert testing", as it gets rid of this confusion, as well as of the question of: "if I use a accessibility tool, is it still manual testing?". I look at it similarly to how Alistair Garrison grouped it. Although I would label it slightly different.


1) Conformance testing: The goal here is to see if minimal requirements are met. This involves expert testing (or manual testing if you prefer), and if that expert is in any way concerned about meeting deadlines, she will be using accessibility test tools for this.


2) Usability testing: The goal here is to see where the best opportunities are for improving the user experience.


Usability testing won't tell you if something meets WCAG, or at least, I've never known any usability tests that could do that. it's a very different kind of animal in my opinion. So I definitely have concerns about some of the new SCs that are based on user testing.


Wilco


On Mon, Jan 30, 2017 at 1:25 AM, shilpi <shilpi@barrierbreak.com> wrote:
We should specify the criteria to be met but avoid being prescriptive on which testing approach is to be adopted or with how many users, etc. As one can see numerous organization's take different approaches and yet achieve compliance.


Often this is based on scale of test required, time, budgets, etc.


The aim is to get more organization's to adopt accessibility. 


We should look at how to simplify the approaches.


Regards
Shilpi


Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.



-------- Original message --------
From: Alastair Campbell <acampbell@nomensa.com> 
Date: 1/30/17 02:29 (GMT+05:30) 
To: Andrew Kirkpatrick <akirkpat@adobe.com>, WCAG <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org> 
Subject: Re: Automated and manual testing process 



 Andrew wrote:
> What if testing cannot be done by a single person and requires user testing – does that count as manual testing, or is that something different?

We use, and I've come across quite a few variations, so to focus on the general ones I tend to see main methods as:

- Automated testing, good coverage across pages or integrated with your development, but can't positively pass a page.

- Manual review/audit, where an expert goes through a sample of pages using the guidelines. This can assess 'appropriateness' of things like alt text, headings,  markup and interactions (e.g. scripted events).

- Panel review, where a group of people with disabilities assess pages from their point of view, with the guidelines as reference. (A couple of Charity based organisations offer that in the UK, but not my favoured methodology [1]) 

- Usability testing with people with disabilities, run as a standard usability test but with allowances for different technologies etc. Tends to find the whole range of usability & accessibility issues, but coverage across a whole website/app is difficult.

- Usability testing with the general public, although not accessibility oriented will often an overlap in issues found.

I would stress that 'manual testing' must be by experts who have a wide understanding of accessibility and can balance different concerns.  
Whereas 'usability testing' must not be with people who test for a living. If they are expert in the domain, technology or accessibility then they are not typical users.

If something 'requires' multiple testers then we need to (try to) write the guideline or guidance better. (Is that the question?)

Usability is about the optimisation of an interface or experience, rather than barriers in the interface. I came from a Psychology & HCI background and started work as a Usability Consultant, I've done thousands of test sessions, but it is quite a different thing from testing accessibility...

I hope that helps, but I have a feeling there is a question behind the question!

-Alastair

1] https://alastairc.ac/2006/07/expert-usability-participants/






-- 
Wilco Fiers
Senior Accessibility Engineer - Co-facilitator WCAG-ACT - Chair Auto-WCAG

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