QA Testing & Inclusive Design—QA Skills Impact Reviews

This guide provides information on using QA tester knowledge of inclusive design, customers and application functionality to find defects and impact reviews.

Some of the job responsibilities of a QA tester include actively participating in design, user story or requirement development and, in some cases, code reviews. Reviews are critical for catching defects and missing requirements or undocumented but necessary connections. Frequently, the design focuses on the UX and UI design, while developers and product managers focus on delivering on customer-specified requirements. Between the requirements, design and customer expectations are frequently functionality gaps and contradictive elements.

QA testers are uniquely qualified to perform reviews and provide valuable input based on their knowledge of the application, the application’s business purpose and how a user performs their actions. Arming the QA tester with knowledge on the importance and nature of inclusive design only improves the value of their input during a review.

Do you think reviews take too much of a tester’s time? Think again. Reviews provide the perfect opportunity to build a solid understanding of the design and function. By spending time analyzing designs, requirements or user stories, testers gain a better understanding of what they’ll be testing. Testers knowledgeable about inclusive design can automatically spread that understanding to the team and bring the importance of the customer experience to the forefront.

This guide provides information on using QA tester knowledge of inclusive design, customers and application functionality to find defects and impact reviews.

Key Takeaways

• What is inclusive design?
• What segments of inclusive design impact QA testers?
• Learn how QA testers with inclusive design knowledge promotes engagement and testing innovation.
• Discover the benefits of practicing inclusion to increase software quality.
• Find out how inclusive design knowledge positively impacts reviews.

What Is Inclusive Design?

Inclusive design involves bringing in and considering everyone as a customer. Everyone, regardless of physical or mental ability. Developing software with accessibility and inclusion in mind from the beginning enables software applications to meet the needs of a larger and more diverse user base.

Accessibility comes from inclusive design. Accessible features are not items developers can tack on at the end right before a release. Accessibility and inclusive design are baked into the design, code and testing.

Inclusive design focuses on unifying people and spreading an application’s impact further to more users. More users equal more customers, which generates more business revenue. It also generates more application use, which increases the pressure on the development and testing team to ensure high application quality.

Incorporating inclusive design is not difficult, but it is necessary. For all users to actively benefit from using an application, they must all be able to use the application effectively. Inclusive design focuses on simple, logical arrangement that’s easy to read and easier to manipulate without losing quality or function. When testing, ensure applications account for and serve the full range of human diversity. Sounds intimidating, but it’s relatively straightforward.

To incorporate inclusive design take the following actions:

• Choose a development framework that includes built-in accessibility controls and properties.
• Choose products that allow customization to improve accessibility.
• Use controls that interface with assistive technologies.
• Recognize and fix application functionality that excludes users.
• During reviews and testing, testers actively check for inclusive design and accessible features, or diverse usability.

What Segments of Inclusive Design Impact QA Testers?

QA testers must analyze and report defects based on the application’s fulfillment of:

• Overall end-to-end user experience
• Diverse usability
• Visual access
• Control use
• UI responsiveness
• Graphic and image colors and contrast
• Alternative methods of using links, buttons and menus
• Regulatory requirements
• Integration testing with common assistive device types
• Alternative text for images

In many cases, analysis may be subjective. A QA tester may not experience a disability that impairs them from using an application. However, when thinking and acting as a customer, testers must develop a keen understanding of how customers with a diverse range and type of disability will be hindered using the application. Thinking and testing like a customer extends to all customers. All.

Granted, inclusive design and accessibility have long been ignored by software application developers. Things have shifted due to the filing in 2019 of over 2,200 ADA lawsuits for software applications both web and mobile for violating the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Inclusive design is not a convenience, it’s a legal, moral and financial must for software application providers.

In order to support quality and the customer experience, QA testers must understand what accessibility and inclusive design entail and check for both during reviews. Additionally, testing needs to uncover accessibility-related defects and regulatory requirement violations when testing web and mobile apps.

Benefits of Using Inclusive Design Principles To Positively Impact Reviews

QA testers create impact by understanding, testing and actively analyzing requirements, user stories, design and code during reviews.

By learning and using inclusive design principles during testing, testers increase team innovation. New ideas, new visual presentations, alternate means of access are all innovations that increase the application’s usability. By including testers in all reviews, teams encourage innovation from all team members rather than solely those responsible for design and coding.

Testers impact reviews by actively finding defects, missing requirements and missed functionality. Using a diverse customer view enables testers to explore the full range of the application’s usability and report design issues and defects.

Reviews provide the first opportunity to impact both the application functionality and customer experience directly as a tester. Use it to the customer’s advantage and improve the application’s quality along the way.

Does your QA testing team need help organizing testing tasks? Looking for a useful tool to assist in test management including planning, development and execution? Consider tools that make managing testing both efficient and effective. Testing tools like Test Studio leverage the latest in testing technology for creating, managing and executing effective and efficient test execution, be it manual or automated.