Hello friends and greetings for the day. Welcome back to another tutorial on our software testing bootcamp where we are talking about the fundamental concepts of software testing and as a part of today's tutorial we are continuing ahead with quality characters in testing which is our chapter 8 and moving on to the next segment of it which is 8. point to accessibility testing and trying to understand more about what exactly this accessibility is all about and how does it contribute to the overall testing and quality attribute of our system software. In order to talk about accessibility, first of all, the word itself says that we are talking about accessing a system and a general user, a normal user does not have any problem accessing a system subjected.
they are user-friendly enough. In fact, even if it is not user-friendly, they don't find it challenging to learn about it and figure out the ways how you can interact with the system. But we do are taking care of our other set of users which are differently abled and we try to make sure the system is accessible to them as well.
The most important thing here is not all the quality characteristics are practiced for every single product, every single system, every single software which is being developed. But at the same time, we may consider accessibility as in scope to make accessible to the different liable users as well. Now, if in case you are planning to submit your product to these target audience as well, that's where accessibility testing becomes very crucial and important for you to be tested. Now, as part of the accessibility testing, we certainly enable some specific features where you can.
differently abled users can also interact with your system and perform the necessary activities. For an example, I'm talking about people who find difficulty in reading certain specific font or talking about the color blindness or sometime even about the style or the background color of your application which may be distracting or having some kind of blurriness involved which is related to resolution of the text. Now, Accessibility testing is more about making sure that a group of differently able users have your application access in terms of finding different ways to operate it.
I'm not sure how many of you would have seen a ramp right in front of a building which says a symbol accessibility. Even if you talk about using your Windows system, when you lock your screen you have several options for accessibility which includes on-screen keyboard, narrator or signifier as well as text-to-speech and a lot many other things right you do make use of them when you have tough time using your machine but for others it could be a lifesaver as well in fact a lot of you would have visited an automated teller machine that is atm to withdraw some cash the first time i visited an atm when i saw the 3.5 mm jack right there on the machine i thought it was built for me to enjoy music while i withdraw cash from the ATM. But literally when I figured it out after some learning and understanding I realized that this was for the people who cannot read the text at least can hear the lady saying please enter your pin. And then the keyboard continued to support them with the braille engraved on the keys of the numbers to tell them what number is it. Similarly if you talk about the elevators you find braille engraved there which helps the blind people to operate the elevator and and still reach the right floor instead of getting lost.
Now, this is where accessibility becomes very crucial in different types of product around us where we take care of every group of audience who might be using or could be a potential user of our system at any point of time. Now, how to determine these accessibility standards? Is that something which we can decide on our own or is that something which we can do the way we want it? No, there are several standards which take care of accessibility standards. All these parameters and we are here to guide them well, right?
So there are several things. It is important to consider the accessibility to the software for those with particular needs or restrictions for its use. It includes with those with the disabilities as well.
Accessibility testing should consider the relevant standards such as WCAG, which stands for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, and legislations such as Disability Discrimination Act, which is DDA, valid for Northern Ireland and Australia, Equality Act 2010, which follows on England, Scotland, and Wales, and Section 508 US. Accessibility similar to usability must be considered when conducting design activities. Given that we are talking about quality characteristics in more detail, we must also understand these non-functional levels or quality characteristics testing does not kick off when system testing is performed or completed. These are equally a set of requirements which are provided by the initial introduction to the product when we are talking about some functional requirements in parallel. And this is where the non-functional requirements are also determined because...
All the quality characteristics are heavily dependent on the architecture built for the application. You may have the budget to build a house of single story today but you may not restructure the building if in case you want to add two or three more floors to your house later at some point of time. So the design will be built once for all in the beginning of the construction itself.
The same way here the design is something which has to be decided right there that what kind of performance we're going to have, what kind of accessibility access we're going to have, what kind of security we're going to have, or many other factors which are influenced by the design itself. So just like them, those accessibility testing requirements are also supposed to be discussed with the architects, where architects can schedule and discuss all the expectations of the accessibility and build the design according to their expectations. Also, testing often occurs during the integration test levels.
That means generally the accessibility testing gets started right from the integration when we have few modules with us to get started with measuring these parameters at a very high level. Of course the dynamic testing or dynamic interaction from the accessibility point of view can be performed after system testing but initial review and initial interaction and validation of these kind of options can kick off right from integration level and can continue till system testing and even after that where beta users will be performing the test and we can take it up to the acceptance test level. Defects are usually determined when the software fails to meet the designated regulation or standards defined for the software.
There are several tools which can perform these activities for you and you can review the accessibility parameters by following a great guidelines available for you. Also the typical measures to improve the accessibility focuses on the opportunity provided for the users with disability to interact with the application. Now, most importantly, we are talking about what kind of access they are going to have, and we are just going to feel their interaction with the system and trying to test.
So the most important thing here is the measures which we do during these executions are to make sure how we can improve the accessibility interactions for these disabled. users who have some special needs. Now this also includes for example voice recognition for the inputs where we can talk about speech to text or speech to input and ensuring that non-text content that is presented to the user has an equivalent text alternatively. Also enabling text to be resized without loss of content or functionality. That's where you find the zoom option and you sometimes wonder why do we need the zoom option on the page when we can see the content.
text very pretty well. But this is for the people who find difficult to read a smaller text. They can zoom in the system and control the resolution to interact with the system without any difficulties or challenges. Finally, how to get controlled over these execution and understand that what is the best practices to take care of meeting everyone's expectations across the globe.
Now, accessibility guidelines will support you by providing a source of information. and checklists which can be used for testing. In addition, the tools and the browser's plugins are available to help test or identify the accessibility issues such as poor color choice in web pages that violate guidelines for the color blindness.
So there are several other things as an extension available to several browsers which you might be using on your day-to-day work and they can certainly help you to build a better accessible product when you try to build your product next time. So considering these factors, I do understand these are some special levels which you are trying to understand but we just want to make sure that you have a pinch of every other thing which happens around testing and there are specialized accessibility tester which take care of these kind of levels and perform them in a very professional way. So that's all from this particular tutorial team.
Should you have anything else feel free to comment below. I'm always there to address your queries and answer them well. Till then, keep learning, keep exploring, keep understanding the context. Thanks for watching the video team and happy learning.