Here is a quick idea that came to mind after writing my last post. It has often been said that one of the side-benefits of accessibility support would be better automated testing of user interfaces. If a user interface can be read and operated entirely by software, as access for assistive technologies requires, then it becomes possible to write test scripts that check the functionality of the application against expected behaviour. That is, the script interacts with the application via accessibility interfaces and tests that the correct output is generated.
I know there has been some work carried out in this area, but my question is whether this could be expanded further. Suppose that a number of "free software" desktop projects were to develop comprehensive test suites for their applications using the above method. How effective would this be in detecting application bugs and avoiding regressions? Would it be worth the effort? One effect would be that the failure of an "accessibility" interface to yield the correct result would amount to a test failure of the application, and would not just be an accessibility problem that may only be discovered and fixed later. If this technique turns out to be useful, the benefits would lie in better software quality generally, and also in improved accessibility support. Amenability to automated testing could also constitute an additional motivation for supporting accessibility-related API's early in project development, and for keeping that support current. It would also make many accessibility-related bugs visible to application developers (as test failures) and help to ensure that most of the work involved in getting accessibility right would lie where it should - with the authors of the user interface. What do others think? _______________________________________________ Gnome-accessibility-devel mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-accessibility-devel
