Agile Accessibility

From A Testers Perspective

Alicia JarvisTwitter: @ajarvis728

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/aliciajarvis

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Agenda

• Introduction• The Disability Market & Business Value• The “Whole Team” Approach• Overview of Agile/Scrum• Agile (Extreme) Accessibility 101• Mind Mapping• Recap & Questions

Introduction

“The Computer will be ‘the Great Equalizer’. "

- H.C. (Cliff) Chadderton (Former CEO, The War Amps of Canada-

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Creating Business Value: Understanding The Disability Market

“The disability market is about the size of China and is emerging as other markets have in the past—1.3 billion people and

$1.2 trillion in annual disposable income."

- Return On Disability Group-

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The “Whole Team” Approach

Whether you realize it or not, Quality (including accessibility) of the product is already distributed amongst your project team…

• Architects• UX Designers• Usability test facilitators • Developers/coders• Testers• Product Owners/Business• Stakeholders & Vendors

We ALL have a collective responsibility…Accessibility MUST be included in the Definition of Done!

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Agile/Scrum Project Cycle

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Agile (Extreme) AccessibilityStarting Early Reduces Cost, Risk

Reduce risk with accessible deliverables each Sprint

Ordered Product Backlog

Sprint Backlog

Daily Standup

Potentially Shippable Product Increment

Tasks

Sprint Retro

Sprint Planning

Sprint Goal

Accessibility tasks included within each Sprint

Consider Sprint with goal focused on accessibility

Reflect and continuously improve build accessibility skills

Accessibility work items to reduce technical debt

1-2 week Sprints

Sprint “0” Planning Develop Accessibility-Related User Stories:

• As keyboard-only user, I want the ability to reach all links (text or image), form controls and page functions, so that I can perform an action or navigate to the place I choose.

• As a screen reader user, I want to hear the text equivalent for each image conveying information so that I don’t miss any information on the page.

• As a user who has trouble reading due to low vision, I want to be able to make the text larger on the screen so that I can read it.

• As a user who is color blind, I want to have access to information conveyed in color so that I do not miss anything and I understand the content.

• As a user who is hearing-impaired, I want closed captioning functionality so that I can have access to all information provided in video clips.

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Daily Stand-UpActively Listen!

• This is your daily chance to actively listen to what the whole team is doing

Speak UP!• Communicate honestly and effectively• Address accessibility concerns, issues and impediments• Conflict resolution & ideas

• Is there something YOU or THE TEAM can be doing better?

Take Initiative & Responsibility!• Hold yourself and your team accountable• Escalate issues appropriately and through proper channels

Release Planning

Based on user stories under development for each release:• Identify any applicable standards. What laws or guidelines exist?• For those standards, identify conformance and user acceptance

criteria• Estimate Stories accordingly based on team effort

Refine roles and responsibilities of the team• Does the team have the right people in the room?

Communicate early and often• Any major impediments?• Lessons learned?• Deployment considerations and activities?

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Sprint PlanningUnpacking and Refining the User Stories

• For each conformance and user acceptance criteria, identify best practices to develop each user story

• Refine story estimates• Include best practices in the Definition of Ready and Definition of Done

Create Accessibility-Related Tasks• Unit Tests• Automated Test Scripts• Manual Tests• AT Tests• Usability Testing and Feedback• Content considerations (on-screen & off-screen)• Design considerations

Test Driven Development (TDD)Developers, Quality Engineers and Manual Testers identify and create accessibility tests before each build:• Automated syntax testing

• Executes within seconds. Integrates accessibility testing into existing functional tests.• We can leverage work of others

• Manual testing and inspection• Keyboard, Inspection tools & techniques, Colour contrast analyzer tool, etc.• Create and execute manual test cases

• Testing with Assistive Technology• Screen readers (JAWS, NVDA, VoiceOver, Talkback)• Zoom (ZoomText) • Voice input (Dragon Naturally Speaking)

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Automation & Continuous Integration

• aXe

• IBM Bluemix Automated Accessibility Tester (Experimental)

• Tenon

• PA11Y

• IBM AbilityLab Mobile Accessibility Checker

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Pro Tip:

We don’t have Accessibility problems…

We only have QUALITY problems!

Problem Solving

• Defect Triage & Remediation• Treat accessibility defects as you would any other bug• Prioritize based on impact, time to fix

• Identify and address major Issues and impediments• These can be ANYTHING!

• Resource/Skills gaps• Test environment issues• Personality conflicts• Conflicting priorities• Team comfort and structure• Self-care and mental health • Accomodations

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Remediation Matrix

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Remediation vs. Doing It Right

Avg. cost per defect = (num of devs * num of hours) * cost per dev per hour

-------------------------------------------------- (number of fixed defects)

Some estimates in QA community calculate cost around $500 per defect to find & fix defects and deploy remediated code• Dependent upon #of bugs, etc.

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Sprint Review & Retrospective

• Demos• Be creative

• Screen-reader demos seem to go over very well with stakeholders

• Invite accessibility partners and stakeholders • Get their honest feedback!

• Ideas• What’s working well?• What needs improvement?• What can we do better?

Backlog Refinement

• Refine Releases, User Stories & Tasks• Ensure any unmet accessibility requirements are put

into sprint backlog for re-inclusion next iteration• Identify and address any possible unknowns or

problem areas• Team participation with the Product Owner is key!

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Mind Mapping

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QUESTIONS: