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Re: Testing with Screen Readers (was RE: Wai Aria how useful?)

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From: Michael.Moore
Date: Jul 28, 2010 8:42AM

Excellent summation of the issue and the considerations John. For whatever its worth to the conversation I will share our testing protocol as a real world example. Assuming that working for a state agency is considered to be the real world.

1. Test for accessibility standards compliance. We use section 508 since this is what is required by Texas law for a state agency. (Hardware, software, office equipment, telecommunications, web and electronic documents) An important note here is that for most vendor generated content and applications this is the limit of what they are contractually bound to do.
2. Test for valid markup. We use W3C validation for HTML/CSS. Unfortunately we often make exceptions here because the authoring tools/CMS systems used do not generate valid code - e.g. MS SharePoint (Exceptions are not made for public content)
3. Test for proper document structure. Headings, lists, tables etc. Again it is occasionally necessary to make exceptions particularly for systems that rely on Table layout for the interface components - e.g. PeopleSoft (Exceptions are not made for public content)
4. Test with agency standard assistive technology. For screen readers this is currently JFW 9 on Windows XP SP3 with IE7 for web content, Adobe Reader 9 for PDF, and MS Office 2007 for Word, Excel, and PPT. 90% of what we test is for internal use, so we control the platform.

Given that approximately 5% of our rely on AT to perform their daily jobs it is absolutely critical that all electronic information resources that they use work with their assistive technology. Thus the strong emphasis on ensuring that everything works with our standard AT.

Mike Moore
(512) 424-4159