Teleconference Information
Date: 2005-11-14
Time: 1:30 PM
Agenda
Hello Everyone, Robert has spoken to their QA manager and he is available to join us at the next teleconference. Robert, thank you very much for arranging it. After the interesting discussion from last teleconference, it is the time to discuss all methods and procedures they are currently using and potential functional testing procedures that can ensure the accessibility of the programs or modules they are testing. So please think about more functional testing procedures and share them with us at the next teleconference. You can find the functional testing we are suggesting at: http://cita.disability.uiuc.edu/collaborate/webct/ Info about the next teleconference: Date: Monday November 14 2005 Time: 1:30 PM - 2:30 PM CST (Chicago Local Time) Phone: 217 265-6999 Suggested topics: 1. Functional testing procedures 2. Multi language content (English/Arabic) 3. More accessibility improvement suggestions? Please send any relevant topics you would like to discuss at the telemconference. Thank you. Hadi
Minutes
Teleconference November 14th, 2005 of the WebCT Accessibility Interest Group Present: Hadi Bargi Rangin, Chair Jon Gunderson, Scribe Philip M. Kragnes, Minnesota Robert Dumas, WebCT Jodi Roberts, Mississippi State Steven Michaud, WebCT David Schwarte, Purdue Konstantinos Nikos Yfantis, UIUC Saroj Primlani, NCSU Kimerly J Wilcox, Minnesota Lisa Fiedor (joining late), NCSU Regrets: Allen Marsha Adrian Wehmeyer HR: Welcome Steven ITEM #1 Functional testing procedures SM: We have a two teir approach for accessibility, so we can check for accessibility as we can SM: We do outsource some accessibility testing to a third party, that supply a section 508 report SM: We have a twenty page test documents RD: Just to be clear, we do not have a full blown accessibility testing SM: We do spot checking with screen readers, we do manual testing like with the keyboard RD: Partly what we are doing here is just looking something after it has been identified as a problem RD: We may ant to setup an additional test suite for accessibility and make it part of the default testing. Can this group help Steven in making the QA testing. RD: Steve I sent the URL to you. RD: Hadi can we go through this list HR: We like to have accessibility out of the box, we agree with RD, we want testing integrated into the QA testing. I know that fixing bugs is hard. PK: What does testing with accessibility mean. Section 508 compliance testing does not mean that is functionally accessible. RD: The section 508 does allow us to say that we meet the standard, but this is often not enough PK: The section 508 is just a guidelines or goals HR: When I worked for a company they did not include people with disabilities, so this is a new way of thinking. The accessibility laws in this country though require accessibility for students. DS: I have looked at the issues, and I have worked on accessibility in the telecon industry and IBM on accessibility issues. The big issue is getting executives to allocate the resources. RD: We need to work on management buy, DS: Time and resources is the big issue and this group can help us to focus our resources. HR: Thats good, SP do you have any comments SP: If you do this functional testing, you will not need to do the external Sectino 508 testing. RD: We need to do the testing anyway SP: We can't get away with poor accessibility for our students HR: Can you explain the process of QA, do you try to access functions using the keyboard SD: We do have as part of all of our test suites the tab navigation to functions and default field. If you can tab to all the active fields, we can cover 90% of this requirement. But there is also an efficiency issue, how can people cancel out and have focus put back in the same place. HR: There are many areas of the program that are not keyboard accessible like the discussion and e-mail system. SD: We report the problems and it is up to management to allocate the reources. Depending on the phase of things are found, keyboard support may not make the keyboard. KW: The discussion system is widely used. SD: A lot of the feedback we get from people who purchase the product, is new features and not on accessibility. This forum is giving us feedback. HR: What does first line administrators mean? SD: The person who signs the check, not the indivdiual users HR: What about onChange events RD: I definitely get information on these things from QA. I often get change requests from QA. Like inconsistencies in design. They look for them and provide information to me. SD: We are moving forward in improving the consistency i the new design. PK: What happens when you are using keyboard navigation when using or not using assistive technology. For example in a screen reader, you need to go into a forms mode, and having dual functions for the same keystroke is very confusing. SD: Adaptive technologies like screen readers, I have not done that personally, there are people on my staff that know more. These different layers of software, many times it is JAWS intepreting things incorrectly. Pilot error. SP: We have suggested that we do some of the testing. SD: Thats an offer I am more than willing to take up. SP: Different people can pick up different ATs other than screen readers, and how certain features degrade when magnified. SD: I often need to pick and choose in terms of what technologies to check. PK: You cannot specify a particular assistive technology SD: Right, but we can only test so many KW: If you choose something someone is not using it is the wrong one for them SJ: The differences between screen readers is keyboard JG: We do know there is differences between screen readers RD: You can help us test with a wider range of technologies, without a group like this it would be much more difficult to do RD: We would like to open up one of the stable servers for testing SD: Yes JR: Is this for Vista 4, or another future list RD: Yes PK: What about the problems of your design getting changed RD: We have been working on this and the HTML validation. In my group we design features and the initial HTML. We do a validation for accessibility and standards confomrance. It is sent to developers foe encoding into JSP. Then we get the code back and we check it. The one thing we were not soing, but we are doing now is doing another validation check at that point. During the UI clean up or QA phase another validation be done. PK: I was wondering if there is a functional description, they can look at it and say this the functionality has been implemented. RD: QA takes the function specs and in concert with product managers develop a set of QA tests. I am just trying to think of an angle here. When you have a feature or a specification for a specific tool... The more application wide features for accessibility the more QA subsets have to be defined. PK: To me that would be over whelming, but we want to make sure that some things are NOT done, like onChange events. RD: We do a search on those event handlers, and we make sure they are fixed. SP: We can use validators to do that testing for you. We use some automated tools to do this. HR: Is HTML validation part fo the QA process? DS: We are starting to use tools for dynamic accessibility testing, like the firefox accessibility extension HR: What is your general opinion about the requirements DS: It is not out of sync with what we want to do it, I will work with RD on making sure we can do the maximum testing for the resources we have. Hopefully we will be able to do everything, but when push comes to shove what should we use our resources on. SP: Are you asking us to prioritize DS: You have a number of different sections, when we have specific problems, we need some help in saying which problem is more important to fix. HR: It is difficult to say which is more important, since different disabilities have different needs. KW: No easy answers. RD: They are all priority 1, I need them all DS: When it comes down to the last few days before we ship it helps to get opinons on what is more important HR: It is very difficult to prioritize these items. RD: What I am hoping to get out of this meeting is to review the list with Steven and try to help him get these into the QA testing. This is a test suite for full keyboard. I know right now we are getting better and making sure that QA is checking before something goes out the door. QA is the last defence before a product goes out the door. HR: Any other comments on functional testing? RD: I will keep SD in the discussion and trying to organize a company meeting to help developers and managers. HR: I would like to visit RD: Maybe HR you could do the meeting HR: Thank you SD for attending and for integrating functional testing into the QA process. HR: What about the next meeting? RD: We are still writing code. HR: There is the expanding menu issue and the focus changing issue. SD: We are aware of the expandable menu problem. HR: I was talking to Jon about it, but how do other people feel about it. SD: It is both a usability and accessibility issue. It is anoying to everyone. HR: Next meeting? RD: Not next week. Next meeting December 5th.
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