Accessibility Testing Opportunities in Web Development
Oksi, Alexis (2020)
2020
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Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2020120826865
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2020120826865
Tiivistelmä
Web accessibility has quickly become an important topic among creators and maintainers of websites, since new laws on web accessibility have been passed around Europe imposing accessibility requirements on many websites as well as spreading awareness about the topic in the industry rapidly. At the same time the question among development teams arises on how to best ensure that these newly introduced requirements are met. By exposing relationships between existing testing practices in web development and available accessibility testing practices, this study has aimed to identify opportunities to integrate accessibility testing among other testing practices in the web development industry.
This study has applied a literature review as well as qualitative research methods. The literature review was chosen to expose existing knowledge and to learn about the topic. A semi-structured interview approach was used as a data collection tool in order to enable a dialog between interviewer and interviewee and bring up information that would have otherwise remained uncovered. The data was gathered from two developers that had experience with web accessibility and public sector clients, who are affected the most by the new legislation. The data was coded to be able to perform a meaningful analysis and recognize patterns and relationships.
As a result, this study was able to identify several software testing practices that have been applied in web development. Similarly, web accessibility testing practices were classified as software testing practices and an overlap between these and existing testing practices was found. Further research is required to evaluate if integrating accessibility testing methods among other similar practices would prove to be the most efficient and effective approach.
This study has applied a literature review as well as qualitative research methods. The literature review was chosen to expose existing knowledge and to learn about the topic. A semi-structured interview approach was used as a data collection tool in order to enable a dialog between interviewer and interviewee and bring up information that would have otherwise remained uncovered. The data was gathered from two developers that had experience with web accessibility and public sector clients, who are affected the most by the new legislation. The data was coded to be able to perform a meaningful analysis and recognize patterns and relationships.
As a result, this study was able to identify several software testing practices that have been applied in web development. Similarly, web accessibility testing practices were classified as software testing practices and an overlap between these and existing testing practices was found. Further research is required to evaluate if integrating accessibility testing methods among other similar practices would prove to be the most efficient and effective approach.