RE: accessible banking:

>  Why is that?

Odd as it may seem, as much as some care about the Internet being
accessible, most care more about their financial information being
correct at their financial institution.  

>  Are you honestly suggesting that a test need to include every single
>  combination of dynamic data and template, for every document, ...

No - I did not suggest this, I stated it as a matter of fact.  One
template can be populated by a wide variety of data, depending on customer
type [e.g. consumer versus small business].  Both smaller/shorter and 
larger/longer values need to be tested.  Further, the possible output 
rendered by one template can vary dramatically - each variation must be
tested.

Point somehow was lost here - there are thousands of hours of testing
involved when launching a new online banking site.  I never said all of
these were for accessibility testing.  Given the large number of hours
required to assure all users financial information is presented correctly, management is reluctant to add more testing hours to support additional 
browsers/platforms.  

>  Testing each use-case against the basic system is *most certainly* not
>  something which requires "thousands of QA hours",

You make this statement based on?  I suppose you are comfortable with the banks records of your financial information being *basically* correct.  
For most visitors assuring that only "...the basic system..." is accurate is simply not good enough.

Then there is the matter of what happens when exceptions occur - what does
the system do? What information is provided to the user?  Any one use-case
can have multiple exception causes, each of these needs to be tested.

As for the bit that was totally misunderstood...
A) I did a terrible job of making a simple point
B) simple point is, templates do nothing to reduce testing for 
accessibility when there are content related guidelines that require testing
all the content of every page for accessibility.  For example - it is a 
violation of the guidelines to have a language change occur without properly 
tagging it.

Perhaps there is a lack of large site experience on this list. 

Misstating the cost involved in testing for accessibility does little to 
promote the cause.  It is a real cost, a significant cost, a cost I 
have found tends to stop many before they even begin to attempt making their
site accessible.  Leading readers of this list to believe otherwise undermines
credibility.

[bottom-up quoting snipped]

Kurt Mattes


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Received on Monday, 7 February 2005 19:49:47 UTC