Tuesday 9 May 2017

30 Days of Accessibility testing | DAY NINE

https://dojo.ministryoftesting.com/lessons/30-days-of-accessibility-testing

  1. Disable images in the browser. Can you understand the page?

This one's hardly gonna be a challenge at all. Or at least that's what I thought to myself. Except it was harder than it first appeared. The first thing that I decided to  was look at the above link without the images on and see how that appeared. Actually did pretty well.

The next thing I decided to do was look at Gmail without images.  This was not so ideal. So it turns out that apparently Gmail uses images for all it's labels.  Naughty Gmail. Although just navigating around my inbox was not as bad as if I tried to access Drive or my account or go back to the Google homepage because apparently all of those links are, you guessed it, images which don't seem to really have alternative text so you get a little bit lost if you turn the images off  period. You pretty much don’t get warned what you’ve lost.

OK let’s test  Google a little bit more, how  does Blogger cope? Actually the answer to this seems to be that it does ok.  Then just to make things more exciting I decided to type this up as I went along.  Of course I'm yet again trying to do one of these one-handed though so I decided to go all out accessibility and try and use speech to text. Blogger doesn't seem to support  speech to text and to be honest I'm not that surprised or really that disappointed. I decided to go a bit hacky and type in Google Docs and copy and paste.  Google Docs does  have speech to text, but saying his perfect would maybe be over stating it.  I have ended up going through and editing this some typing these are acting it as I go along so you might find that there's a couple of things that don't make perfect sense that all adds to the accessibility experience and hopefully you'll be able to identify which things are poor accessibility tools which things are we just not being able to use computers properly. Whilst using the speech to text there were a couple of  I wasn't sure how to do so I used the question mark button brought up to help. That was great until I tried to get rid of it . Turns out the X button is an image so I couldn't find it .A little bit of clicking about the area I guessed it would be in solved the problem but it was an interesting unexpected issue which really made things harder.

So let's do a couple of other popular websites with the images turned off and see how they fare.

First stop the BBC homepage. Actually not too bad. With the exception of the BBC blocks not being visible or having alternative text, at a rough glance it feels as if you could probably navigate this page quite happily.

Ok next up was to go look at Facebook and see how that survived without images. I didn't really imagine it was going to be particularly well.  So there's no profile pictures and any posts that are simply images leave a bit to be desired. But the main problem really was that without the images I didn't really  see the point. It did’t fall over in a heap though.

One last stop at social media to post to Twitter. Actually  coped quite well without images. I didn't do  an awful lot of with it but it did seem to cook quite well. I suppose this is because it is largely text. I would imagine it would have been even better in the old days before the extended support for anything other than a micro blog post.

So to summarise it's been an interesting little exercise.  It's definitely something that's worth doing on websites I’m working on as it really highlights areas where we may have dropped the ball.  I found it worthwhile and I suppose that's the most important thing.

Sunday 7 May 2017

30 Days of Accessiblity Testing | DAY SEVEN


Day 7. Unplug Your Mouse, leave your touchpad alone and navigate using the keyboard.

So, I did that, and then I started trying to write this blog.
This first thing I realised was that I couldn't remember how to toggle between tabs in chrome.
Then I went into my blog editing homepage and found the link for ministryoftesting30days challenge, and that was all pretty easy.
Starting a new post and pasting into it was also quite easy.
I normally change the font to Arial. I cannot figure out at all how to get focus onto the edit controls so that won't happen today.

I decided at this point to do another task. Also by this point I'm doing everything with only my right hand as I was also holding a reluctantly sleeping baby.

I decided to copy four folders of photos on a windows to an external hard drive and then onto my mac. The windows part went fine but ejecting was tricky. I just unsafely unplugged like the dangerous rebel I am in the end.

Copying the photos from external hard drive to my  mac was harder. Finder was VERY hard without a mouse. I had to select using the trackpoint. I tried about 10 key combinations before I gave in but in the end enough was enough.
Moving the images to where I wanted was obviously not going to happen easily.

Starting spotify was a problem because my virus checker always pops up, which is normally fine but can't be closed without mouse intervention. Or at least not in any obvious way.

Okay, trying to navigate spotify app on my laptop with only a keyboard made me almost lose my sh*t. I gave up. I used the trackpad. I know, I'm the worst.

SUMMARY (not a heading because I CAN'T GET TO THE SODDING OPTION WITHOUT A TRACKPAD)

I thought this was going to be easier than it was. I thought I used my keyboard a great deal but clearly not. This was a seriously frustrating.

Saturday 6 May 2017

30 days of Accessibility testing | DAY SIX

Day 6. Learn about assistive technologies, and share one you liked (hardware).


Okay, so in my Day 4 post I got excited about refreshable braille displays and mistakenly thought I'd never heard of them before. Of course that isn't true, Matt Murdock uses one on the Netflix series Daredevil and therefore as my wife pointed out, not only had I heard of one, I'd seen one in use. Stupid Dave.

Okay, so back on track for today, I found a couple of resources 
http://abilitynet.wikifoundry.com/page/Head+Tracking+and+Pointing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assistive_technology
https://www.atia.org/at-resources/what-is-at/

I decided that instead of writing about one I'd try and just briefly list an A-Z of assisted Technologies. Some of these are hardware, some are software, some are not necessarily Web related or particularly technology related but I thought it would be fun. And I really struggled for some letters so please just forgive me, I stretched a little. Also, I threw in the fun game of missing two letters out because I was just done trying to crowbar anymore in. 


A Standing desk

Braille watches (seriously look these up, they're really cool. I have to admit I looked into them because of this blog post http://www.theothermurdockpapers.com/2009/09/assistive-technology-in-daredevil/
Coloured overlays (for dyslexia primarily)
Dvorak Keyboard
Enlarging (or Enbiggening as someone I used to work with refered to it as, I wish that was a word) ability on software
FM listening systems 
Gel pads (for mice and keyboards)
Head trackers and pointers
Joysticks
Keyboards of all shapes and sizes 
Left handed mice (I understand that lefhandedness isn't a disability)
Magnifying glasses
Note taking software
Other assistive technologies such as speech to text software 
Puff and sip. (or as it's normally known, Sip and Puff) 
Refreshable braille display
Screen Readers
Tongue control
Unusually big screens 
Voice recognition software 
Workstations designed for standing up.
Xtra buttons on mice for extra functionality 
You've heard of speech recognition right?
Zooming in functionality

Friday 5 May 2017

30 Days of Accessibility testing | DAY FIVE


Day 5. Read the 12 guidelines of WCAG 2.0. Write a short post on one of them.

I struggled for a while to find specifically which 12 were being referred to. That may be because the above linked page seems to have been written specifically to be as in coherent to follow as possible (this could be sleep tiredness kicking in.) So I think I've clocked them from the contents and relisted them here for future use.

  1. Perceivable : Provide text alternatives for any non-text content so that it can be changed into other forms people need, such as large print, braille, speech, symbols or simpler language
  2. Perceivable: Provide alternatives for time-based media.
  3. Perceivable: Create content that can be presented in different ways (for example simpler layout) without losing information or structure.
  4. Perceivable: Make it easier for users to see and hear content including separating foreground from background.
  5. Operable: Make all functionality available from a keyboard. 
  6. Operable:Provide users enough time to read and use content.
  7. Operable: Do not design content in a way that is known to cause seizures.
  8. Operable: Provide ways to help users navigate, find content, and determine where they are.
  9. Understandable: Make text content readable and understandable.
  10. Understandable: Make Web pages appear and operate in predictable ways.
  11. Understandable: Help users avoid and correct mistakes.
  12. Robust: Maximize compatibility with current and future user agents, including assistive technologies.
Now I have already talkeed about this but I'm a big 'Keyboard' advocate, I find it weird that peoople make things that cannot be worked only by the keyboard. This especially true of very specific use software. I think that by taking this into consideration you're designing and getting your solution working for a whole host of people: power users, blind people, people with mobility issues. There are such a vast number of reasons why mouse and tracker ball usage can exclude people that I always think this seems like a no brainer, however it's not always easy to convince a team.

Thursday 4 May 2017

30 Days of Accessibility testing | DAY FOUR

Okay, we're on Day Four,
https://dojo.ministryoftesting.com/lessons/30-days-of-accessibility-testing

4.Research the benefits of inclusive design.

Inclusive design. Okay, I have no idea what that is, so I did some reading and watched a couple of videos. I have to be honest, I only spent an hour or so because I wasn't blessed with abundance of time to spend on this today.
So I looked at a couple of pages. Some of which I really just skim read.
https://www.w3.org/WAI/users/
http://www.inclusivedesigntoolkit.com/whatis/whatis.html

On the second link I got some good take-away points. So firstly, according to a Microsoft survey (admittedly in 2003) only 21% of people have 'No disability', and it's more of a scale rather than a simple black and white. Okay, that has me thinking a bit more about how really, is accessibility really just usability with a wider understanding that people are all different. Also it makes me ask questions like, how much do I trust this data considering it's over ten years old, doesn't tell me how many people it's sampling or really any thing at all about their sampling and is Microsoft, who I obviously inherently distrust.

I had to parse the section on 'Universal design' a couple of times, and then I realised it states at the end, that due to the nature of the web, Universal Design and Inclusive design are effectively the same in that situation.

I wonder how as a tester I can use inclusive design, especially considering the things I currently work on don't really have any UX design. Although, then it got me thinking that maybe it's my job to ask the kinds of questions relevant to inclusive design, because there's no-one else to ask them? Hmm, interesting.

Also I watched this

Inclusive design and testing: Making your app accessible - Google I/O 2016

https://youtu.be/SOZwfQO4rVM
This may be trying to sell a google product but some of the things they talk about are quite interesting.

Also as part of watching this video I got distracted when I learnt about refresh-able braille displays, which I didn't even know were a thing. Although at way over 2 thousand dollars a piece, it's clear why they aren't a thing tonnes of people are designing for yet. https://youtu.be/IIQNhFpbbEI

So maybe in summary I was a bit unfocussed today and may have not definitely achieved the goal today that well. However I believe I learnt some new things about accessibility, and I had fun doing it and really that's the only thing that matters in the end.

Wednesday 3 May 2017

30 day of accessibility testing | DAY THREE

https://dojo.ministryoftesting.com/lessons/30-days-of-accessibility-testing
Day 3. Share your favourite accessibility testing tool.

I have to be honest, I don't really have one. Currently I don't do an awful lot of accessibility testing, which is largely why I'm doing this '30 days' malarkey. So I don't think if I was to say I have one it would be that genuine. What I'll do instead is list the few I currently use

Spectrum Chrome Extension

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/spectrum/ofclemegkcmilinpcimpjkfhjfgmhieb?

I threw this at the ministry of testing homepage and it looked okay.
I also took a look at amazon.co.uk, facebook and the independent websites too and they all looked fine. Maybe I just don't know what I'm looking for, I'll admit normally what I'm looking for is whether focus is clear.  Maybe if I do day 15 and 18 I'll get better at this.

Chrome Vox


Browser based screen reader. To be honest I haven't used it an awful lot, only for about an hour a time on a handful of occasions, but I don't find it that easy to use. I think I may just need to train myself on it.

THE KEYBOARD

My understanding is that number of accessibility issues can be highlighted if you just use a keyboard and try doing without a mouse, which can be tricky for a good number of accessibility reasons. I do hope this is true or I'm just deluding myself. In my experience a great number of 'power users' just use the keyboard so it's good for usability reasons as well.

Looking for suggestions for other software or even hardware to try out for accessibility testing; comment below (I think I have comments enabled) or tweet @allcapstester 


Tuesday 2 May 2017

30 days of accessibility testing | DAY TWO

Day two and I again was a little lazy; I just ran WAVE over a couple of websites.
It is something I hadn't played with before and I'll defintely be trying it again in the future. The browser extension is good as well, I'm hoping I'll be able to use that to look at code in production.
https://dojo.ministryoftesting.com/lessons/30-days-of-accessibility-testing


As an added accidental accessibility challenge I typed all of todays blog post with one hand because the other is holding a small sleeping baby. It took a long time. Also doing a print screen across two buttons on oposite sides of the keyboard with one hand was enlightening.

I've learnt quite a bit from this though with very little effort. It seems like an easy way of making me think in a different way about the webpage I'm looking at, and that's fun. And having fun is really the only thing that matters in the end.



Monday 1 May 2017

30 Days of Accessibility Testing | DAY ONE

Accessibility testing is not something I'm good at. In fact more acurately it's something I know very little about. When i saw that Ministry of Testing had a new 30 days coming up I thought I'd give it a go.
https://dojo.ministryoftesting.com/lessons/30-days-of-accessibility-testing
Now, full disclosure, due to my current personal circumstances I may take some days off, I'm forgiving myself for this now. But I will try and do every one of the exercises in some way eventually.


Day 1. Learn about the diversity of disability and the affects of aging

So, basically I haven't had a load of time today but I did read the following article

https://the-pastry-box-project.net/anne-gibson/2014-july-31

and it has made me think about the following things on a new piece of software I'm testing.

Making internal software, it's very easy to fall into the trap of "There's noone on that team who's blind so we can ignore accessibility.' Of course, I already knew that was entirely bunkem but reading through this list has given me a number of relevant questions. 

1. Does anyone who is using it have dyslexia, or reading issues?
2. We have many users for whom english is their first language, should we consider this?
3. There is an interesting scroll issue that we thought can be solved with a control button, how practical would this be for someone who cannot use two hands at the same time?
4. For people with attention issues, is it going to be obvious to them what stage they are up to in a process?
5. Do we have any directions or error messages that include left and right or presume a certain way of using the software that could be a problem?
6. How well will the software work if people zoom in because they cannot see clearly, for any reason.

If the only thing I do is go back and look at the list in the link occasionally to see how it relates to what I'm currently working on, that will be an improvement. Hopefully it will improve the software we're making, or at least, when I examine the software with these questions in mind it will be an interesting exercise.  And that may improve my happiness and that’s really all that matters in the end.