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Re: Usability Testing

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From: Peter Krantz
Date: Jan 18, 2007 10:20AM

On 1/18/07, <EMAIL REMOVED> < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
> I am looking for comments and information
> on how usability is weaved into the development process (includes IA), what
> kind of resources and applications are necessary and is there an advantage
> to using an external vendor. If you have experience with any of these
> subjects your thoughts and comments would be appreciated.
>

I have experience from integrating basic accessibility testing in the
automated testing framework in the software development process. In my
experience this is of great help to developers when developing a web
based app. For a brief intro how this can be done in Ruby on Rails see
[1]. Having it as part of the normal automated testing framework
quickly brings inexperienced developers on board.

This of course only covers the basics and there are a lot of things
that you can not test until you have proper content in your
application. However, it does remove all basic errors so that the
final accessibility evaluation can be done more quickly.

When doing a final accessibility evaluation (e.g. as part of
acceptance testing at the end of an iteration) I have found it useful
to use an external company (preferably a specialist) to do the
evaluation. They tend to find more stuff and usually they can work
remotely.

Regards,

Peter Krantz
http://www.standards-schmandards.com/



[1]: See http://www.standards-schmandards.com/2006/accessibility-in-ruby-on-rails/
and http://www.peterkrantz.com/2006/accessibility-in-rails-with-raakt/

RAAKT can of course be used with other software frameworks.