Technology is changing the way we live, but it needs to change how we access it, especially in the digital age that provides innovation and new opportunities to everyone who consumes it. It requires a lot of effort in creating a technology that can be used by ‘everyone’. For instance, if a product is released in the market, it is important that the product is used by every individual, even those with special needs.

Contents 1. The Need For Accessibility Testing 2. How to Perform Accessibility Testing? 3. Overview of Accessibility Testing Guidelines 4. Why should Businesses Opt for Accessibility Testing? 5. What are the Benefits of Accessibility testing? 6. Increase Accessibility Testing With Automation 7. What are the tools Used for Web accessibility testing? 8. What Challenges does Accessibility Test try to Address? 9. Conclusion 10. How Can TestingXperts Help?

If a technology empowers people who are underpowered or with special needs, it can inspire their lives in many ways they never imagined. This is where Accessibility Testing is needed!

The Need For Accessibility Testing

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 15% of the population have a disability, which is the reason Accessibility Testing has become important.

It is important that product innovations are delivered to people with special needs as well. They require the implementation of special technologies in products. Some of these technologies include, screen magnification software, screen readers, speech recognition software, special keyboards to work and for communication, and more.

However, there are various innovative products, applications and websites that are not user-friendly and accessible to everybody. Accessibility Test is geared towards normal users as well as users with different types of disabilities. Accessibility Test not only focuses on verifying usability, but it makes sure that an application can be used by people with many disabilities, including visual, auditory, physical, speech, cognitive, language, learning, and neurological disabilities.

How to Perform Accessibility Testing?

Accessibility test of a website, product or an application usually involves extensive manual examination of individual pages, along with testing individual functions like product searches and online form submissions. Accessibility can be achieved using both manual and automated testing of specific elements of the digital technology.

Overview of Accessibility Testing Guidelines

Whether the testing is automated or manual, it is important to check for compliance with specific accessibility testing guidelines

There are several standards for accessibility such as W3C’s WCAG 1.0/WCAG 2.0, BITV 1.0, Section 508 & Stanca Act, etc. out of which Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 ARE ACCEPTED WORLDWIDE. These standards provide details and standards on how to make a website or application accessible. An application or website having the right knowledge of these standards and abiding by these standards has a high rate of being successful in the market.

Why should Businesses Opt for Accessibility Testing?

It is important for businesses to enable and make their critical applications and mobile apps to be easily accessible even to people with disabilities. Several government bodies across the globe have made many legalizations to make the IT products accessible for disabled people. As per the publishing of Web Accessibility testing Initiative, the WCAG 2.0 aims to make the website easily understandable, accessible, and usable on all websites. Also, WCAG 2.0 is a definitive guideline that should be followed by businesses during the website development which is achieved by leveraging accessibility test, as this helps in many ways such as:

• To make the website easily accessible for users with challenges or disabilities
• To attract the users and increase the company market share
• To be accessible for users with low-bandwidth
• To make the website and the information available for the users across regions

What are the Benefits of Accessibility Testing?

1. Increases the website usage and market share:

By practicing the methods of web accessibility, it will be easier for the people with disabilities to access websites successfully and ensures an effective increase in the traffic

2. Enhances the brand image:

The method of web accessibility not only eases in understanding the website, it also positively helps to increase the user’s approach and ensures a positive effect towards their website or application and helps to build brand

3. Makes the website accessible for the society:

Performing the accessibility test effectively helps the application to be equally accessible for people with disabilities and provides an equal number of opportunities. This way of accessing the web irrespective of the disabilities will ultimately make an active participating society.

Increase Accessibility Testing With Automation

Following are four steps through the application of which automated accessibility testing can perform really well:

1. Develop regression tests to automate accessibility testing:

Regression tests play a considerable role in improving the performance of automated accessibility testing. This method also proves to be cost-effective. Upon that, most of the manual testing part can be eliminated from the development process.

2. Develop a strategic plan of action for implementing accessibility testing:

From an agile methodology perspective, accessibility testing needs to be carried out throughout the agile process. The best way is to start from design as it plays an active role in testing. The design gives a structure and framework for carrying out testing effectively. Accessibility testing works well if there are a well-defined structure and framework set in place.

3. Capitalize on accessibility testing tools:

There will be instances during the development process where the implementation of accessibility testing can be challenging. The reason being most organizations think that accessibility testing performs really well through the manual testing platform. But, with the right accessibility tools, automation can prove to be a game-changer in terms of efficiency.

4. Identify the right test automation platform:

With the right test automation platform, automating accessibility testing can be easy, quick and effective. The tautomated testingesting team must find the best test automation platform that can fully justify the project requirements.

What are the tools Used for Web Accessibility Testing?

Automated Accessibility Testing Tool (AATT): 

This tool helps to provide accessibility API and custom web applications for HTML CodeSniffer. This tool helps in many functionalities such as in the creation of reports to evaluate reports, automatically validates the single web pages, etc. It is an open-source tool and supports various HTML and image formats.

Web Accessibility Checker:

This tool is popularly known for providing the easiest ways to perform accessibility checks over the web applications of ASP.NET. This tool is easily customizable and supports different international accessibility standards.

Apple’s Accessibility API:

This tool is specifically designed to test iOS apps. The usage of this tool will effectively help to improve the testing practice and benefits to improve user experience.

Google’s Accessibility Test Framework for Android (GATF):

This tool helps to detect a number of issues related to web accessibility test. This tool uses the already existing Android UI and integrates with frameworks and other tools.

Color Contrast Analyser:

This tool helps to check the issues related to text color contrast on web pages. Also, this tool provides the functionality to analyze either a portion or complete the contents of a web page.

DOM Inspector:

This is an add-on for the Mozilla Firefox browser. This helps to find the area or the section where the DOM can easily help to perform an accessibility check.

AChecker:

This is an open-source tool that is designed for web accessibility evaluation. In this tool, one can easily evaluate web accessibility by uploading the HTML file or entering the URL. Also, this tool provides several accessibility guidelines to choose from, such as the Stanca Act, BITV 1.0, WCAG 2.0, Section 508, WCAG 1.0, and HTML Validator.

Pa11y:

This a popular tool that is focussed to help the developer who is working on accessibility test process. This tool enables us to set up own suite of accessibility test, which includes a dashboard, command-line interface, a web service that helps to schedule tests for several URLs.

Dynomapper:

This is a visual sitemap generator with 4 types – Circle, Default, Folder, and Tree. This tool helps to evaluate the website’s HTML content and create the sitemap from a URL. Also, it imports XML files for generating a sitemap and provides content inventory and audits files, images, etc.

Tenon:

This tool is well known as a web accessibility tool because of its flexibility, accuracy, and quality results. The tool uses API and gets integrated into the already existing toolset. The tool is effective in creating evaluation reports that are generated in HTML, CSV, XML, and JSON.

What Challenges does Accessibility Test try to Address?

Vision Disability:

The method of accessibility testing helps to overcome the challenge of complete blindness, color blindness, or poor eyesight.

Hearing Disability:

The web accessibility test practice helps to overcome the challenge of auditory problems such as deafness, hearing impairments, difficulty to hear well, etc.

Literacy Disability:

The testing practice helps to overcome the challenge of finding words, reading problems, etc.

Physical Disability:

This method helps to overcome the difficulty of using a mouse and keyboard.

Cognitive Disability:

Accessibility test process helps to overcome the challenge of poor memory and learning difficulties.

Conclusion

Making Accessibility Test a regular part of the software testing process, and implementing the necessary checks early and often can help improve the overall experience of using an application or website. As the world is moving towards improving the customer experience, an application must be tested for its accessibility.

Good accessibility is directly proportional to good user experience. Although the methodologies to accessibility may vary, the trend towards IT consumption patterns that focus on users will continue to drive consumer and enterprise IT requirements for the predictable future. With the drift towards more accessibility, human-centric design and

How Can TestingXperts Help?

With sound knowledge of the accessibility regulation like W3C’s WCAG 1.0/WCAG 2.0, BITV 1.0, Section 508 & Stanca Act, etc., TestingXperts (Tx) ensures all practices to standardized accessibility are followed within your application. Tx take various personas like impaired vision, color-blindness, blindness, deafness, hard-of-hearing, motor Impairment, Mobility Impairment, and incorporate disabilities; making sure that client’s website, application or product is user-friendly and is ready for the predictable future.

Bringing in actual users to testing process, Tx enhances the overall experience as users are the real experts in their abilities and their assistive technology. Connect with us to leverage our state-of-the-art Accessibility Testing Services.

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According to Statista, in 2012, testing and quality assurance consumed 18% of IT companies’ budget that has now reached to 39% and will be 40% in 2019. 

Established companies have started realizing the importance of software testing. However, there is a dire need for technology startups to follow the same. Technology startups often face uncertainties and funding roadblocks. However, there is a great reason for startups to opt Software Testing; and the reason is Quality.

Contents 1. Limitations of a Technology Startup 2. Major Goals and Objectives of Software Testing 3. Software Testing Types that Shouldn’t Be Ignored 4. Conclusion

While a few bugs early in the software development phase might not seem a big deal, but software defects are known to be costly post its product-release. In fact, IBM states that the cost of errors increases dramatically as your software solution progresses through the development cycle. It’s about 30 times more expensive to fix a bug after release than during the initial stages.

[Image Source – IBM]

Limitations of a Technology Startup

Just like any other enterprise, technology startups have their limitations and challenges in software testing. These include lack of budgets, time and resources that have to be allocated to testing. Let us discuss these challenges in detail.

1. Time:

There is a constant pressure for startups to release a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) fast to get quick returns. Most startups perceive releasing their product in the market and fixing the bugs later upon identified by users/market is a good idea. However, they fail to realize that post-production testing takes a lot of time as there is a need to rework on the same piece of code every time they make a change. Hence, more time is involved in finding and correcting bugs at this stage.

2. Resources:

Like every coin has two sides, startups also come with the excitement of learning something new and dealing with the constant pressure of wearing multiple hats. Most startups don’t have a dedicated department for testing, their development teams perform the necessary tests. Therefore, they might overlook some bugs due to the lack of dedicated resources for testing.

3. Budget:

Budget constraints are a harsh reality for startups, and this is the reason software testing is overlooked. Additional headcount means extra expenses. The cost associated with finding bugs posts the production stage is way higher than finding them during the development stage.

4. Thought Leadership:

Often, technology startups lack a Thought Leadership team having a strategic planning of QA activities. The tools to use, the number of resources to involve, the total amount of time QA activities consume and the overall costs are often overlooked by startups. This makes it difficult for technology startups to release a certain application.

Understanding how to overcome the above limitations can help technology startups define their strategy. Under no circumstances should software testing be overlooked or dismissed.

Major Goals and Objectives of Software Testing

– Finding defects in the software to allow a smooth process

– Evaluating the level of a product’s quality and informing the stakeholder

– Ensuring that the final results match business specifications and user requirements

– Increasing profit potential

– Gaining customer loyalty by offering a quality product

Software Testing Types  that Shouldn’t Be Ignored

Here are a few types of software testing that should never be ignored:

Exploratory Testing

For a new application, exploratory testing is exceptionally important to lay the foundation of quality. Exploratory testing is an ad-hoc process, where the tester manually goes through the software in search of finding bugs.

Regression Testing

Testing is not a one-off process, every time a change is made to the code, there is a regression test to ensure the code has not broken the previous functioning features.

Performance Testing

Providing faster performance is the best way to establish a loyal user and vice versa. Application load time is an important factor that helps in keeping your users happy. The performance testing process ensures that the application loads quickly and can handle expected traffic.

Conclusion

When you are a new player in the market, quality will set you apart and help you grow. A simple formula to make your technology startup a hit is to keep your users happy and provide them with a seamless experience while they browse your application. Ignoring testing from your plan can probably cost you and your customers.

TestingXperts provide startups with unique plans according to their needs and in their budgets. Our core-flex models help in dealing with the inconsistent resource requirements of our startup clients. We offer flexible engagement models to facilitate our clients with optimized QA resource planning. This meets their fluctuating requirements at any time of their contract and saves unncessary budget leakage. Connect with us to have a unique software testing services plan for your startup.

The post Why Tech Startups Should Not Ignore Software Testing Types first appeared on TestingXperts.

Contents 1. Factors To Consider Before Outsourcing QA Services 2. Benefits of Outsourcing QA Services  2.1 Quality and productivity  2.2 Security of code  2.3 Early identification of risks  2.4 Faster testing results  2.5 Understanding of the modern QA trends  2.6 Automation in QA 3. Why Choose TestingXperts?

Assigning the task of Quality Assurance to a specialist QA and software testing company having relevant experience in this domain accelerates the entire Software Development process, ensuring productivity, objectivity, and efficiency. Moreover, by outsourcing, companies can massively reduce their QA costs.

Factors To Consider Before Outsourcing QA Services

1. Know about the verticals which the QA Company has experience

2. Understand what are the technologies the QA Company has hands-on

3. Thorough research about the company

4. Understanding operational models of Onsite/Offshore models

5. In-depth subject knowledge from an implementation perspective

6. Understand the cost factor

Benefits of outsourcing QA Services:

Quality and productivity:

For an unbiased evaluation of the software, it is essential that businesses assign the development and testing work to different teams. A single team for both development and testing will generate a lack of objectivity. Moreover, by doing so, companies put themselves at risk of not being able to find errors in the software. Having two different teams for both roles will ensure unbiased testing. Therefore, outsourced software testing to a specialist company that has expertise in testing software/ applications will be the best decision.

Security of code:

By outsourcing software testing process, companies will have utmost security as they do not have to share the details of the code with their outsourcing partners. In fact, software testing companies prefer to be compliant with the latest regulations and international standards like ISO and GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation). Also, by outsourcing Quality Assurance, enterprises can be unperturbed about breach of Intellectual Property (IP) Rights.

Early identification of risks:

Quality Assurance is mostly ignored by companies, as they are unaware of its crucial role in Software Development. As a matter of fact, QA is essential for delivering an excellent piece of software. Partnering with an outsource QA team will keep companies in a safer zone, as well as allow them to detect bugs early on in the process. As the cost of defects increases with the development of the project, the QA process must be agile and should start with the development process itself.

Faster testing results:

By outsourcing the QA process, the turnaround time of defect detection also decreases, making the process faster and effective. There are various models followed by the testing companies, and Follow the Sun is the most effective and efficient out of these. In this model, if the client is in some other time zone, the right QA team makes sure the time zone difference does not hamper the efficiency of the process, and the testing results are thus delivered overnight.

Understanding of the modern QA trends:

Specialized QA companies are evolving rapidly and are always updated with the latest quality assurance trends. Associating with an experienced QA team can help companies to identify the best tools and technology for testing their application.

Automation in QA:

With the latest advances in technology and automation, QA has also become automated. A competent team of testing specialists can have a better understanding of test automation tools used in the process. Companies find it hard to use the advanced automated QA techniques in order to test their applications. Therefore, outsourcing QA to a company that holds hands-on experience in automated testing and is using the most recent methodologies can be the best option.

Why Choose TestingXperts?

Here at TestingXperts, we believe that QA is a critical part of the Software Development Lifecycle and deserves an expert approach. Our highly-skilled QA and software testing engineers are well-equipped with the latest trends and methodologies in the software testing domain.

With distributed agile teams in different time zones, enterprises are facing challenges in fostering effective communication across their teams. To address this need, TestingXperts provides its clients with a Real-time offshoring, Follow the Sun, and various other global delivery models to provide round-the-clock customer service to our clients. Our understanding and proficiency, coupled with flexible engagement models provide our customers with cost-effective options, ensuring positive business results. In order to maintain and provide utmost security to our clients, we take strict security measures. TestingXperts is ISO 27001:2013 and GDPR compliant. Connect with us now!

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