Did you know you can promote web application accessibility through QA? Dive into accessible digitization with Karen Laiacona, Director of QA and Vice President of the Unqork Access ERSG.
A quality assurance approach towards enterprise application development requires a team of QA engineers to blend automation and human creativity to ensure your application meets high standards of quality and reliability. Automation takes care of repetitive aspects that need testing again and again, while the QA engineers help the machine capture nuances like edge, negative, and null test cases.
QA is an important part of the application building process, making sure web applications account for everyone’s story. But did you know QA can make software not just more inclusive, but more accessible for all? We spoke with Karen Laiacona—Director of QA in Professional Services and Vice President of our accessibility ERSG, Unqork Access—to discuss how QA helps make each Unqork application accessible.
QA helps consistently ensure accessibility
As digitization becomes the norm across industries, enterprises will continue to create digital applications that provide access to a wider audience. In order for digitization to truly make your applications usable by all kinds of people, you should consider the accessibility of your digital services. “We have to consider what our responsibility is to make accessible software,” Karen says, “especially in spaces where that’s already required.” Accessibility is a responsibility that every software company should value, but it’s important to remember disability affects many different people in many different ways.
Since disability is such a vast field, it can be tricky for businesses to approach accessibility. For example, you might do your due diligence and make sure buttons on your web application use fonts large enough to be seen by people with low vision. Do those same buttons have a sharp enough color contrast between text and background color, so they can be seen by people with color blindness? This isn’t to say that you must account for every possible disability. Any effort addressing the types of disabilities most relevant to web applications—vision, hearing, mobility, and literacy—is the main focus. However, this example demonstrates how pursuing accessibility can seem like a huge undertaking for tech teams.
From a technical standpoint, making applications accessible can be a challenge and many teams simply don’t know where to start. Oftentimes, people may not think about accessibility upfront because they haven’t had to consider it in the past.
Along with limited knowledge and experience, interaction is another challenge. “Typically, people with sight and hearing disabilities interact with your apps through software that crawls through the application, like a screen reader,” Karen explains. “Your application must be compatible with software you haven’t built, one that’s out of your control.” In order to support these capabilities and simplify navigation, as well as respond to accessibility regulations and standards, your software must be very advanced.
Creating accessible software takes a lot of care and planning, but it’s worth it in the end. Digitally accessible software is better software for everyone to use.
Creating accessible software takes a lot of care and planning, but it’s worth it in the end. Digitally accessible software is better software for everyone to use. Beyond equity and inclusion, benefits of building accessible software include:
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Increased usability
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Increased market share and audience reach
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Improved efficiency
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Maintained customer loyalty
In addition to making sure your application is top-notch, the QA team plays a key role in ensuring everything is as accessible as it can be. Here’s how we do that at Unqork.
The Unqork approach to software QA
In order to make your QA process more accessible, Karen asserts the QA team must be “brought in at the right time.” Leveraging QA early on in a process enables you to determine your accessibility goals and challenges before anything is created or modified, saving you time and resources. At the beginning of each project, the Unqork QA team runs a questionnaire before embarking on a build. By aligning all intentions, the project can target the right accessibility goals.
However, starting at the right time means nothing if you don’t have the right people in place. “The QA team needs to know what they’re looking for in order to implement changes,” says Karen. In order to ensure each project has proper specialists, Unqork leverages an international testing team that is familiar with accessibility regulations. “This ensures all testing is specialized for that specific project’s needs,” Karen explains. Testing also requires the right staff to parse results and translate findings, so Creators and styles teams can make any necessary adjustments.
Through automation, testing is even easier. “People are still involved in automated testing processes,” Karen notes, “but their time is spent working with collaborators and offering recommendations.” Along with automated testing, Unqork performs regular audits in order to confirm all relevant groups have access to the same tools and information. This helps the team respond to changes, anticipate new features, and ensure all new and old capabilities meet every accessibility regulation.
Remember, QA accessibility isn’t built in a day! These best practices form a feedback loop, which you’ll have to return to again and again as you strive to make accessible applications. Although any type of feedback can seem negative, Karen insists these evaluations simply give a better understanding of the current situation, what the future has in store, and what a user can do today to build accessible applications.
Moving Accessibility Forward
Ensuring software is accessible to and for all is a marathon, not a sprint. A significant portion of our work is to reinforce our ideals and standards so accessibility is always on the top of our minds. The Unqork Access ERSG serves the Unqork community and product by educating everyone on the values, methods, and impacts of building digitally accessible software. Expansion is focused on international growth and connecting public enterprises with applications that suit their needs. We have the potential to impact millions of people’s lives by sharing these practices.
We want to encourage our readers—both inside and outside of the enterprise tech industry—to learn more about accessibility. The movement is growing, and we need more people on board! Here are some great resources to start your accessibility journey:
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W3C’s Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI): W3C develops international standards for the web and offers many support materials. WAI resources can help you make websites, applications, and other digital platforms accessible to everyone.
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WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines): These resources aim to provide you with a single shared standard for web accessibility, which meets the needs of international individuals, organizations, and government agencies. Two excellent WCAG resources are the quick reference for WCAG 2.2, and living checklists to help you record and monitor your accessibility progress.
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WebAIM Color Contrast Checker and Color Oracle: You can use these two online tools to manage color and contrast on your web applications, which helps people with low vision, color blindness, and autism differentiate between text color and background color
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Native screen reading app: There are iOS- and Android-enabled applications that help those who have difficulties seeing to access and interact with digital content via audio or touch
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axe Chrome extension: Accessibility checker for developers, testers, and designers in Chrome
See how easy it is to set up integrations within Unqork so you can utilize accessibility tools.
When you partner with Unqork, you’ll gain access to even more accessibility resources through the Unqork Creator Accessibility Rulebook. This rulebook offers a list of components that are accessible, as well as non-accessible features and their alternatives. “As you go through the designer,” Karen explains, “you’ll know what you can use in order to meet your relevant regulations.” With the Unqork QA team, you can fulfill web accessibility needs for more usable applications and a more inclusive future.
Experience Unqork for yourself by scheduling a personalized demonstration with one of our in-house experts. Also, sign up for the Unqork newsletter for more no-code developments.
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