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Re: Automated Accessibility Testing Recommendations?

for

From: Karl Groves
Date: Nov 11, 2013 10:22AM

Ryan,

Thanks for linking to my post. I have a number of posts on Accessibility
Testing at http://www.karlgroves.com/category/accessibility-testing/

Its actually possible to do some testing on dynamic pages. Deque's FireEyes
always impressed me with the ability to script an interaction and perform
testing on that interaction, including testing changes to the page's DOM.

One of the primary shortcomings of automated accessibility testing of
JavaScript-driven interaction is that the tool must first be "JavaScript
aware", must know what elements have events bound to them, and must be able
to trigger those events and test the changes that result. From a testing
perspective it would require a ton of heavy lifting to check out every node
to see if it has events bound to it, trigger those events, detect which
nodes have changed and test those changes to make sure the right changes
occurred.

For instance, just the other day I saw a menu that, when opened, allowed
you to traverse through tabbing much like a list of links would. But this
had a role of "menu" and the items each had a role of "menuitem". In this
scenario you should arrow through the options, not tab. Again, all of this
type of stuff *could* be done automatically, but I don't know anyone who is
doing it. Instead, a lot of tools either don't try to do it or say they do
but just don't to it well.

In any case the end result is the same: Manual testing is required no
matter how good the tool is.




On Wed, Nov 6, 2013 at 9:57 PM, Ryan E. Benson < <EMAIL REMOVED> >wrote:

> > evaluating dynamic pages,
> Hate to tell you, dynamic pages are really impossible to truly test. See
>
> http://www.karlgroves.com/2013/09/29/some-thoughts-on-automated-web-accessibility-testing/
>
> --
> Ryan E. Benson
>
>
> On Wed, Nov 6, 2013 at 5:12 PM, Thorson, Marc < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>
> > There is interest in our organization to improve the automated
> > accessibility testing we do behind-the-scenes along with our manual
> testing
> > processes. The WAVE API appears to be a great tool for evaluating static
> > pages, and we are seriously considering it, but I'm also interested in
> > inquiring about other tools in the community that might provide more
> > capabilities for evaluating dynamic pages, for example, recording user
> > input in forms and repeating transactional page flows that could be
> > incorporated into an automated enterprise build process. Any
> > recommendations?
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Marc Thorson
> >
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--

Karl Groves
www.karlgroves.com
@karlgroves
http://www.linkedin.com/in/karlgroves
Phone: +1 410.541.6829