Accessibility testing - Essay Example

?Accessibility Testing Introduction The Society for Petroleum Engineers (SPE) is one of the largest member organizations that serve professionals from the global oil and gas industry. The association organizes many events, seminars and programs to improve the skills of individuals employed within this industry. The society also helps researchers and engineers to contribute their findings and experiences through similar opportunities. An accessibility test was performed on the society’s website (www.spe.org) to determine the site’s usability across a number of parameters and to evaluate whether the site was accessible to people with various abilities. Some of the core criteria that were used to perform this test included site design, content and functionality. All test cases were constructed on the basis of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Test Methodology The purpose of testing the accessibility for the website is to perform a conformance evaluation of the site to determine whether the site meets industry guidelines such as the WCAG. While the site can be evaluated using automatic and semi-automatic testing tools like HTML Validation service or WAVE (Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool), it was decided to perform a manual evaluation of the website. The purpose of the manual method is to evaluate a webpage based on a list of checkpoints or criteria as specified under WCAG 1.0. The W3C recommends the use of a Graphical User Interface (GUI) to evaluate a sample of web pages. For the purpose of this project, two different web browsers, namely Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) and Google Chrome (GC), served as the GUI for the accessibility tests. The following tests were performed to evaluate the website’s conformance to the WCAG (W3C, 2011): 1. Image test: Turned off the images and checked whether the alternate text was available. Method: (in IE) Tools ? Internet Options ? Advanced ? Uncheck ‘Show Pictures’. (In GC) Options ?under the Hood ? click ‘Content Settings’ under the Privacy tab ? select ‘Do not show any images’ under the ‘Images’ tab. 2. Sound test: Turned off the sound and checked whether the audio information was available through other alternatives like text or images. Method: Open Volume from quick tray, click ‘Mixer’ and click on ‘Mute Speakers’ 3. Font test: Changed the font size of the text on the various controls in the webpage and evaluated if the site was still usable for larger font sizes. Method: Hold CTRL key and move the mouse wheel up or down to increase or decrease the font size respectively. 4. Resolution test: Tested the pages under various screen resolutions to determine whether any scrolling was required to navigate across the web page. Method: On Windows 7 machines, click ‘Show Desktop’ icon, right click on any part of the screen and select ‘Screen Resolution’. Modify the screen resolution in the resulting dialog. 5. Color contrast test: Changed the screen color to Grayscale and determined whether the color contrast in the web page was still sufficient. Method: Open ‘Calibrate Display Color’ from the Control panel and change color settings in the fields provided. 6. Keyboard accessibility test: Attempted to navigate across the page controls using the keyboard (especially using the TAB key) alone. Determined if the site was navigable without the use of a mouse. Method: load the webpage and use the keyboard for all navigation and interaction with the webpage. 7. Backend Content test: Disabled all style sheets, scripts and applets and evaluated whether the site was working as expected. Method: (in IE) Tools ? Security ? click ‘Internet’ in the zone section ? click ‘Custom Level’ ? Scroll down to ‘Scripting’ ? disable ‘Active Scripting’. (In GC) Options ?under the Hood ? click ‘Content Settings’ under the Privacy tab ? select ‘Do not allow any site to run JavaScript’ under the ‘JavaScript’ tab. Results The following table summarizes the results for the tests conducted on www.spe.org Test Result Image Many images do not have any alternate text provided Sound The website does not contain any sounds Font Size Some of the text gets distorted upon enlarging the font size Resolution Horizontal scrolling is required if the screen resolution is reduced Color Contrast The color contrast was noticeable upon changing to grayscale Keyboard Possible to navigate through the website without using a mouse Backend Content No noticeable changes upon disabling scripts or applets Image It was observed that many images were not provided an alternate text. In fact, more than half of the images used in the website, especially the larger ones positioned in the central part of the webpage, did not have an alternate text. The following figures demonstrate this discrepancy before and after disabling images. Fig 1: www.spe.org before disabling images Fig 2: www.spe.org after disabling images (no alternate text visible) Sound The site does not have any sound content. Thus, no effects were observed upon disabling sound in the host system. Font Size An interesting feature was observed upon increasing the font size. While normal text, embedded in tags such as or

was clearly legible even upon enlargement, changes to the text size in controls like buttons led to some distortion in the text, making them increasingly unreadable. Fig 3: text clearly visible after increase in font size Fig 4: text in controls appears distorted after increase in font size Resolution test Changing the screen resolution had similar effects like the change in the font size. However, the distortion appeared across all content including text and images. Additionally, changing the screen resolution required scrolling the page both horizontally and vertically to view and access all content provided in the website. Similar changes were observed when testing the site in both web browsers, signifying that the effects of resolutions changes were site specific in nature. Fig 5: effects of change in screen resolution from 1280X1024 to 800X600 Color Contrast The screen color was calibrated to grayscale in order to test the site for color contrasts and to determine whether the contests were still distinguishable. The results suggest that most of the website was still distinguishable with clear distinctness between text and images. Content in images, such as people and text, was also distinguishable. However, the main logo of the website appeared to have some issues with the background upon conversion to a grayscale monitor. Fig 6: Faulty logo in Grayscale Keyboard The site was navigable without the use of a mouse. It was possible to move from control to control on the site. However, there was no dotted border around the currently active control to suggest the present location where the cursor was active. Such borders normally appear upon events like mouse click on a hyperlink or button. Instead, the user had to rely on the URL at the bottom to determine the currently active control. Fig 7: relying on the status bar to determine currently active control Conclusion The various tests performed on the website www.spe.org demonstrate the importance of evaluating a website’s usability and accessibility across all user types. The tests clearly show that some of the current features do not conform properly to the guidelines stated under the WCAG. The site demonstrates some issues in most test scenarios thereby signifying the need for a major revamp in its design and development. The site does not have any support for sound and cannot be accessed by those with visual difficulties. The only notable test that the site passed was the one performed by disabling all JavaScript and Applet code from running behind the site’s user interface. Therefore, the overall conclusion from the accessibility tests for www.spe.org is that the site needs to be improved further to enhance its usability, especially for those with visual or other physical impairments. Read More