IT Accessibility Review
Volume 1, Number 4
In the Spotlight
Accessibility Testers, Our Greatest Asset
This month TecAccess would like to honor the backbone of our operation -- our "Accessibility Testers." Providing comprehensive testing and assessment to a wide range of clients, these specialists know first hand that people with disabilities want and need access to today´s technology.
Accessibility Specialists such as Sean Stapleford, Debra Chandler, and Helen Thomasson are adept at reviewing, evaluating, and assessing the six unique areas associated with Section 508. From product installation and product, interface to product help and technical support, our testers rate each component while weighing the overall compliance level with respect to overall application. Realizing that Section 508 compliance is generally not accomplished all at once, the team of dedicated testers at TecAccess always walk clients through an action plan from assessment all the way to conformance.
The majority of our testing personnel are blind, vision impaired, deaf or hearing impaired, motor impaired and/or have cognitive impairments. This allows our testing associates to evaluate the recommended technology solutions from the actual perspective of those intended to benefit from this assistive technology. In addition, we employ a small control group of testers without disabilities. Taking this evaluation process beyond scientific guesswork and statistical probabilities, our testers with disabilities are able to provide actual, reliable test assessments.
Focusing on design accessibility and usability, testers aim to identify which design elements will slow, confuse, or cause users to make errors, such as visiting the wrong part of a website or using the product or service incorrectly. This kind of extensive testing is, by nature, quite tedious. However, if it is left until the final steps in development, it can create unnecessary work and expense ultimately forcing the company to recode major parts of a product or site.
For this reason, the range of testing tools our testers use for coding spans the spectrum from test editors to visual design suites that create code as you move design elements across your screen. These tools represent the "best-in-class" and the most commonly deployed hardware and software available. However, using the best tools on the market will not guarantee accessible code or design. That is the ultimate goal of our testers. In the end, our testers always think out of the box as they test the product or sites, and for that, we salute them.
