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Testing Procedures

An integral part of the service we offer is the testing procedures we use.  The procedures we use vary depending upon the service you require and can be split into three broad categories.

  1. Automated testing

This part of what we do concentrates on validating your website with specialist software and W3C tools.  These tools are useful in providing an overview as to how accessible your website is at the moment and are also very time-efficient in terms of highlighting certain accessibility problems.  However, these automated testing techniques can only look at the coding that sits behind a website, therefore manual testing on other aspects of a site is of vital importance.

  1. Manual testing

Our manual testing is focused on elements of accessibility and usability that an automated tool is not able to look at.  Because automated tools do not use a site in a practical way, they also cannot take into account other factors such as brand consistency. 

The manual checks we do are structured so that we can look at a variety of visual issues, such as whether the colour scheme that has been used is accessible.  We also examine the content to ensure that it has been structured in a logical manner and that the clearest and simplest language has been used, taking into account the subject matter.  It is also essential from both an accessibility and usability perspective that a site is easy to navigate and provides information about the way a site is structured (for example, by use of a site map). 

In addition, there are elements of the coding of a site that an automated tool cannot check for.  For example, automated tools cannot read text within an image.  Text within images is not accessible without alt tags but an automated tool would not flag this up. Manual testing for accessibility issues is a specialist task that is beyond the capacity of automated tools and is a vital part of any accessibility check.

  1. Disabled user testing

Together with our partners, we have a group of disabled users with a variety of impairments who will undergo testing for us in a real life situation.  We provide each of our testing panel with a selection of tasks to work through on the website and ask for their feedback in terms of how easy the site was to use and whether they felt it adequately took their needs into consideration.  Testing with disabled users has been cited as highly desirable by the Disability Rights Commission in their guide to good practice in commissioning accessible websites (also known as PAS 78).