Testers' Island Discs Ep43 - Deborah Reid

A happy new year to all! Deborah Reid finds herself as the first guest to be marooned on the island in 2021, to talk to us about getting started with accessibility testing, in support of her upcoming accessibility course which will be released on the Ministry of Testing Dojo in April. We discuss a wide range of different accessibility needs, which can sometimes include temporary limitations that we don’t think of as accessibility problems. There are tips on simulating accessibility within your usability testing, some shout-outs for tools, advice on getting issues fixed, and we look at the growing legal imperative which will make such problems difficult to ignore in the future. We also open with some chatter about our comparative experiences in working with online retail/services during the weirdest of weird years, including the challenges of predicting traffic spikes, and how we’ve all had to iterate our performance/scalability to keep up. On the music front, there are some upbeat selections, some wedding favourites, some long-overdue classics, and some delightfully childish singalongs. Podcast Links: Deborah on Twitter: @deborah_reid19 Bloom and Wild Rev Paw Patrol Full Fact: How many people have a disability? GOV.UK: 2010 Equality Act W3C: A Cautionary Tale of Inaccessibility: 2000 Sydney Olympics website Section508.gov: US accessibility law JAWS screen reader WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) A history of the accessibility tool “Bobby” PA11y WAVE web accessibility evaluation tool Lighthouse Colour Contrast Analyser Neil’s recommended accessibility resources from the MoT site: Article - Matt Obee: A Software Tester’s Guide to Web Accessibility Activity - 30 Days of Accessibility Testing Video - James Sheasby Thomas: Accessibility Testing Crash Course (TestBash Manchester 2017) Video - Elizabeth Fiennes - Accessibility for Beginners Video - Louise Gibbs - Accessibility Experience Report (Test.Bash Online 2020) Video - Ady Stokes - Getting Started with Mobile Accessibility Testing (TestBash Manchester 2020) Video - Crystal Preston - Accessibility Testing 101 (TestBash San Francisco 2019) Plus Deborah’s course will be coming in April! Regular Links: Listen to and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes and SoundCloud Sign up to be a guest on the show Testers' Island Discs playlist on Spotify Testers' Island Discs reading list on Goodreads Follow us on Twitter