Rob Lambert's Blog

I thoroughly enjoyed presenting at last nights Wessex Scrum User Group. It was a fairly small turn out but it’s a user group that’s definitely worth popping along too.

The discussions after the talk were brilliant, hilarious, controversial and opposing, but that’s what it’s all about. A good discussion around agile, scrum and software development. It’s also a great opportunity to meet like minded people wanting to find out more about agile.

It was a mixed group of disciplines too with testers, project managers, consultants and programmers. This added to the mix and also offered a really good balance of views.

The groups gathering momentum and the topics planned for the next few are looking very interesting indeed.

http://www.linkedin.com/groups?home=&gid=1802122

I know this post is very specific to Windows 7 but I thought it was worth pointing out that some of the little tools embedded in the OS are often the most valuable to us testers (or anyone wanting to recreate an issue). One such tool is the Problem Steps Recorder in Windows 7. It’s a little app that records all of the actions a user performs and then documents them through screen shots and information about the actions. (Note – this is not a record and playback tool)

Open the start menu and type psr in to the search bar.

You should get the psr.exe file returned in your search.

Open the application and you’ll get the Problem Steps Recorder screen as follows:

Now, it’s a simple case of clicking Start Record and then doing your testing, recreating of bug or whatever it is you want to record. This isn’t exclusive to web either – this tool works for anything in your operating system. In my example I’m going to open Internet Explorer and then search for iMeta before browsing through a few pages within the iMeta site before opening up the iMeta twitter page.

After you have finished simply click stop recording and you will be asked to choose a save location. The file that is saved is a zip file, so give it a name and location and hit save.

Now open the zip file.

The zip file contains a .mht file which contains all of the details of your recording session. In my example below it has captured both desktops (we use dual desktops). The document that opens contains screenshots and descriptions of the actions taken. At the end there is a summary of actions too. You can skip to each part or play the screens as a slideshow too.

Here’s a couple of screens taken from the file.

The screen shots don’t do the final report justice. I’d suggest you give it a go to really see the details of the screens. At the end of the file is the following information. I’ve highlighted the test steps in bold/red:

“Recording Session: 12/01/2010 10:27:25 - 10:27:52

Problem Steps: 8, Missed Steps: 0, Other Errors: 0

Operating System: win7_rtm

Problem Step 1: User left click on "Internet Explorer (push button)"
Program: Windows Explorer, (win7_rtm), Microsoft Corporation, EXPLORER.EXE, EXPLORER.EXE
UI Elements: Internet Explorer, Running applications, Running applications, MSTaskListWClass, Running applications, MSTaskSwWClass, ReBarWindow32, Shell_TrayWnd

Problem Step 2: User keyboard input in "Google - Windows Internet Explorer" [... ENTER]
Program: Internet Explorer,(win7_rtm.), Microsoft Corporation, IEXPLORE.EXE  SCODEF:CREDAT:, IEXPLORE.EXE
UI Elements: Internet Explorer_Server, Shell DocObject View, Google - Windows Internet Explorer, TabWindowClass, Frame Tab, Google - Windows Internet Explorer, IEFrame

Problem Step 3: User left click on " - Developing software, transforming business (editable text)" in "imeta - Google Search - Windows Internet Explorer"
Program: Internet Explorer, (win7_rtm.), Microsoft Corporation, IEXPLORE.EXE  SCODEF:CREDAT:, IEXPLORE.EXE
UI Elements:  - Developing software, transforming business, iMeta - Developing software, transforming business, imeta - Google Search, Internet Explorer_Server, Shell DocObject View, imeta - Google Search - Windows Internet Explorer, TabWindowClass, Frame Tab, imeta - Google Search - Windows Internet Explorer, IEFrame

Problem Step 4: User left click on "consultancy service (editable text)" in "iMeta - Developing software, transforming business - Windows Internet Explorer"
Program: Internet Explorer,  (win7_rtm.), Microsoft Corporation, IEXPLORE.EXE  SCODEF:CREDAT:, IEXPLORE.EXE
UI Elements: consultancy service, consultancy service, iMeta - Developing software, transforming business, Internet Explorer_Server, Shell DocObject View, iMeta - Developing software, transforming business - Windows Internet Explorer, TabWindowClass, Frame Tab, iMeta - Developing software, transforming business - Windows Internet Explorer, IEFrame

Problem Step 5: User left click on "Embedding Agile (editable text)" in "iMeta - Consultancy - Windows Internet Explorer"
Program: Internet Explorer, (win7_rtm.), Microsoft Corporation, IEXPLORE.EXE  SCODEF:CREDAT:, IEXPLORE.EXE
UI Elements: Embedding Agile, Embedding Agile, iMeta - Consultancy, Internet Explorer_Server, Shell DocObject View, iMeta - Consultancy - Windows Internet Explorer, TabWindowClass, Frame Tab, iMeta - Consultancy - Windows Internet Explorer, IEFrame

Problem Step 6: User mouse wheel down on "iMeta - Consultancy - Embedding Agile (pane)" in "iMeta - Consultancy - Embedding Agile - Windows Internet Explorer"
Program: Internet Explorer,  (win7_rtm.), Microsoft Corporation, IEXPLORE.EXE  SCODEF:CREDAT:, IEXPLORE.EXE
UI Elements: iMeta - Consultancy - Embedding Agile, Internet Explorer_Server, Shell DocObject View, iMeta - Consultancy - Embedding Agile - Windows Internet Explorer, TabWindowClass, Frame Tab, iMeta - Consultancy - Embedding Agile - Windows Internet Explorer, IEFrame

Problem Step 7: User left click on "> Follow us on Twitter (editable text)" in "iMeta - Consultancy - Embedding Agile - Windows Internet Explorer"
Program: Internet Explorer,  (win7_rtm.), Microsoft Corporation, IEXPLORE.EXE  SCODEF:CREDAT:, IEXPLORE.EXE
UI Elements: > Follow us on Twitter, > Follow us on Twitter, iMeta - Consultancy - Embedding Agile, Internet Explorer_Server, Shell DocObject View, iMeta - Consultancy - Embedding Agile - Windows Internet Explorer, TabWindowClass, Frame Tab, iMeta - Consultancy - Embedding Agile - Windows Internet Explorer, IEFrame

Problem Step 8: User left double click in "iMeta Technologies (iMeta_UK) on Twitter - Windows Internet Explorer"
Program: Internet Explorer,  (win7_rtm.), Microsoft Corporation, IEXPLORE.EXE, IEXPLORE.EXE
UI Elements: iMeta Technologies (iMeta_UK) on Twitter - Windows Internet Explorer, IEFrame “

As you can see the final file includes almost all of the information you would need to recreate any potential defects or scenarios. Along with the screen shots the information gives a complete picture, which can often be missing from many bug reports.

If you’ve got Windows 7 installed then try using the PSR.exe tool and see if you’d find it valuable.

Also let me know, via the comments (or twitter @rob_lambert) of any other awesome apps that come bundled with the OS. Shout out to Steve S for pointing me to the tool.

Enjoy.

It was the last SIGIST (special interest group in software testing) run by the BCS last week in London. It was reasonably well attended with the Key Note being from  Tom Gilb.

I’ve seen Tom Gilb a few times over the last year and I believe his message is well placed for the testing community. I don’t believe I would ever perform his stakeholder analysis process or return on investment stuff but it’s a sound concept.

Highlight of the day was Steven Ramsay from Linklaters. His talk was honest and insightful and a real struggle against the corporate budget cuts the industry has seen recently. He gave real insight in to the difficulties faced by test managers; struggling to balance quality with reduced costs.

Sasha Gilenson was also quite good but I struggled to see how his new environment configuration tool would solve the many problems we all face. The concept is sound (i.e. knowing whether the live environment is different to the test one) but I don’t see how his software will solve this. I need to read a bit more about this.

Lunch was good as usual. Over lunch I attended a vendor demonstration from Fanfare Software. A tool called iTest. Despite the demo not working and the software not doing what was asked for a couple of examples when it did work it rocked. It looked awesome and gave the tester some really powerful testing approaches. Really good team who knew their stuff too. They had techies and sales people there capable of answering some of the tricky questions asked.

The Share Point was awesome. A guy called Brad Burton from 4 Networking gave a really loud, motivating and hilarious presentation on why networking is so valuable and how we should be thankful for the people we have in our lives over the material stuff we often aim for. Really good presentation. Really good personality.

Martin Gijsen then presented on Advance Key Word Driven Testing which was interesting but I didn’t really get the main message. It seemed to be lost in a series of questions and flow interruptions from the audience. He was apparently excellent in the tutorial though so maybe the message didn’t translate to the main stage.

He was followed by, to be brutally honest, a really poor presentation. I felt really sorry for David Harley because it appeared he had been given the notes on the presentation without seeing the slides in advance. It didn’t help that the notes and the slides didn’t even match. At the end I don’t think anyone knew what he was talking about and he himself seemed totally confused. There were also about 20 slides he didn’t even get to…….

Surprise ending was from Stuart Reid as Clive King couldn’t make it. Stuart did a good talk on agile and how to implement it. Very text book but good still.

Overall it was a good day.  I’m going to be speaking at the March one in 2010 alongside my colleague Tom Quinn so if you get the chance to pop along that would be cool.

Despite the large amount of noise on twitter, it can be an amazing source of information. If you use the right application to filter the twitter feeds then it could become an invaluable way of connecting with people and finding information about things that interest you.

Myself and Neil Rees spent some time trying to get IronPythonStudio working within Visual Studio 2008 so we can get testing frameworks up and running whilst also making using of the .net work going on here at iMeta.

We visited Python forums, VS forums, we Googled and we visited some of the most respected .net and Python sites there are...yet we were stumped. Nothing. We found some good ideas that weren’t right, some dead ends, some complete red herrings and a couple of dead links, but we didn’t find the answer. We downloaded, installed, updated and explored our way to finally compiling, only to find it failed. The compiler was using version 1 of IronPython, we were using version 2.6. Stumped.

We were ready to give up when I remembered someone I follow on twitter is a Python programmer. So we pinged him a message and within 2 minutes he responded with a definitive, “Does not work” with associated links to IDEs that might help.

Well, at least we now know that Ironpythonstudio integration with VS doesn’t work. Boo. And for the record, here is the link to some other IDE tools for ironpython/python development : http://www.voidspace.org.uk/ironpython/tools-and-ides.shtml

But the important lesson learned was that twitter, despite the noise, is becoming a very valuable way of finding answers. It’s not the first time someone has answered a questions for me on twitter, but it is the first time it’s been so quick.

Twitter may not be the answer to all of the problems we face, in some circumstances it can be the cause, but it is a valuable place to go for information. And if we look at twitter as another medium of gathering and sharing information we find it can sit very nicely alongside blogs, books and good old Google search.

In the testing world Testuff have just announced a twitter integration for reporting and results, the first one I have seen bundled with a test management tool. There are now loads of new testing lists being created with the new twitter lists feature, including our very own iMeta Testing list. Most of the prominent thinkers in testing are on twitter too sharing their knowledge, more often than not at the expense of their regular blog posts. Wefollow is a good place to start looking for people under various different directories. The testing one has quite a good list too. A few people here at iMeta are on the C# list…. well, Neil is.

You don't even need an account to read the twitter feeds or to find out what your industry guru(s) are saying. You can just tune in and read along. Just find a hashtag and see what's happening.

You never know....you might find it useful.

Rob..

Day one of Agile Testing Days in Berlin and I’m thoroughly enjoying it.

Despite the fact our taxi driver tried to kill us on the way to the hotel last night we have arrived safely and are being most welcomed by our host Jose. By the way, the taxi driver had used up half of his boot with his own golf clubs meaning he had little room for our luggage. A fact he emphasised with a huge sigh. After much pushing, pulling and kicking he finally got the boot to shut before taking us on a 90 miles an hour tour of suburban Berlin. After several honks of the horn, a couple of really hairy corners and a lot of hand gesturing he finally deposited us at the hotel.

We had some drinks with the key note speakers plus some really interesting people who are giving some presentations over the following few days.

We’ve had loads of interest in iMeta Agility and some really good feedback on our stand.

We’ve now also got some friendly neighbours in the form of iSQI who have a cool stand run by Jana and Silvia.

So far the day has been a mixture of intense introductions to agility and mi-voice and moments of quiet as people go of to see the likes of Elisabeth Hendrickson, Lisa Crispin, Tom and Mary Poppendieck, Isable Evans and Stuart Reid and Tom Gilb. There is probably about 100 people here today all milling around and having a great day.

The venue is awesome. A kind of purpose built conference centre with super fast Wi-Fi and superb facilities.

Interest in the planning poker cards is outstanding, as is the interest in finding out more about iMeta Agility.

Tomorrow sounds like it is going to be a good day. I’m going to be doing my presentation tomorrow also.

If you are at AgileTestingDays then please do pop over and say hi. You can’t miss us stood by the iMeta stand.

The twitter hashtag being used is #agiletd.

Rob..

I’ve been experimenting over the last few years with how best to manage my exploratory testing sessions and test artefacts in an agile environment. And it’s been a long and often tedious process. I’ve used notepad, excel, session based test management tool and a variety of my own inventions along the way. And although all have offered something unique, easy or suitable none have offered the complete package.

This could be because exploratory testing is performed differently by different people or it could just be that it’s incredibly tricky to manage. I suspect it’s a bit of both. I think, however, that I have finally landed on a suitable method of working that allows me to preserve my exploratory testing sessions. At least for now..

As with most agile (in our case Scrum) projects the tool is becoming increasingly more important. Although some teams have dismissed the tools in favour of boards, we’ve found it simpler to use tools to manage work flow, defects and tests. Especially so with co-located teams. In my examples of how I’m managing tests that follow I’m obviously biased in my choice of tool. I’m using our home grown iMeta Agility tool. But the process I’m explaining here will work with any scrum project management software. But do feel free to try out iMeta Agility for free here : http://agility.imeta.co.uk/

Shameless plug over it’s time to explain how I manage my exploratory testing in an agile environment. But do consider that this is just how I manage this process. This may not work for you. It’s not a Best Practice. There’s no guarantee it will work for me on the next project. But at the moment I’m finding this process is best suited to how I work.

Firstly here is typical task board view. In this case with a very simple user story called “User Story 1”. It has a series of basic “tasks” added to the story in various states. Note there is a “Testing > Validate acceptance criteria”. This story includes a hyperlink to any other supporting documentation, including test cases and test data. For me though, the acceptance criteria on the story form the basis of my none exploratory tests. If the criteria is detailed enough I find it negates the need for detailed test cases.

On this taskboard are some tasks I added called “ET Session > Explore this…….”. These are exploratory tests.

As and when I think of exploratory tests I add them to the relevant story as tasks in the not started column. This therefore highlights to me I still have some tests to run, but it also highlights to the team that this story is still not complete. Any exploratory test I think of that does not belong directly to a story in the sprint is added to the story on the backlog (this feature is not yet in the iMeta Agility tool but is planned – for now I use excel)

Over time as I explore the product using the exploratory tests I have already defined it is inevitable that I think of more. These are simply continuously added to the story until I exhaust my ideas and run them all. At which point, the story is probably done. It might be that some of the tests do not *need* to be run in which case they get shifted out and written up as high level test case ideas. These are managed separately through the same excel sheet I use for future ETs.

I keep all exploratory tests listed in excel for future stories and in my agile tool for those relevant to the current stories.

The task itself contains any of the relevant information you may need to run / manage an exploratory test including details like charter, tester, time and date etc. The task is free text so anything you want to include you can. Adding hyperlinks to supporting documents is also a good idea. As and when attachments become available in iMeta Agility I will be using this feature to attach videos of the testing sessions along with screen shots etc. It will help to keep it all together.

Having all of my notes electronically really suits how I work.

So, what about defects?

All defects I find through an ET will have their details recorded in the defect section of the exploratory test. How they are managed outside of that is one for company specific process.

So, what about metrics?

I’ve yet to have a really conclusive need to produce any of the metrics I used to produce in a traditional environment. That’s not because metrics are bad or evil. It’s just the responsibility for quality moves to the team and hence there is less of a need to gather metrics. Instead we do fast and regular deployments where the software is tested in small and manageable chunks. This allows fast feedback and smaller more manageable fixes. Metrics don’t really seem relevant other than the usual milestones and burndown reporting needs.

So, what about being able to trace tests and testing?

This is an interesting one because as the testing completes some teams build up a series of test cases for regression and future testing. Some teams produce a simple but effective automation suite to cover the growing regression. Some teams do nothing. Some teams automate as much as possible. Some teams never re-run an exploratory test.

I tend to create a new test case for any exploratory testing idea that ‘felt’ interesting enough to ever have to run again. For normal tests I automate simple versions of them for regression whilst at the same time building up a test case regression pack to run in future sprints. The automation gives a good indication of how stable the software is, leaving more time for exploratory tests. Too much automation for me and I would have no time to explore. Too little and I wouldn’t have the confidence in the software and i would be spending too much time regression testing, especially as the application grows. It’s a balance which is often tricky to maintain.

All of my test cases are high level guidance tests with limited step details placing more emphasis on the tester. It allows a bit more creativity but ultimately cuts down the amount of administration I have to do on the tests. But this works for me and is not by any means a Best Practice.

So by hijacking the task feature in iMeta Agility (or any other scrum tool) it is possible to list out, manage and record for posterity all of my exploratory testing ideas (with a little help from excel – for now. It certainly beats (for ease) any other system I’ve so far tried. Sure, it lacks the reporting power of session based test management tool and the metric generating abilities of excel, but it’s simple, clean, efficient. And more importantly it works for us, in our scrum environment.

Let me know how you manage your exploratory tests in your environment…..

Rob..

It’s fantastic news to announce that iMeta have just released iMeta Agility for public beta.

So what is iMeta Agility? 

It’s a scrum management tool that all teams here have been using daily to manage our projects. All the project teams running scrum here at iMeta have been dogfooding the product for some months now, fine tuning it, recommending real world enhancements and truly understanding how a tool can help us manage a scrum project. The iMeta Agility team have now made the tool available for public beta.

Where can I get it from?

You can either download or try the online version. Both are here. http://agility.imeta.co.uk

What technology is used?

The tool is written in Silverlight which allowed us to create a super fast experience for the user.

Can I get more cool features added?

As the tool is in the early days it’s a great opportunity for you to help shape the way to the tool should work. At the moment there is no test specific features included but there’s some really cool ideas on the backlog. So it’s a perfect opportunity to throw in the ideas and concepts you’d like to see in a scrum management tool. There’s a forum for you to join too : http://agility.imeta.co.uk/Forum/

Who are the iMeta Agility team?

The iMeta Agility main people are blogging and tweeting about it, so do follow them and get the latest on where iMeta are taking this tool.

Ant Gardiner

Blog :  http://blogs.imeta.co.uk/agardiner/Default.aspx 

Twitter : http://twitter.com/AntGardiner

Andy Boyne

Blog : http://blogs.imeta.co.uk/aboyne/Default.aspx

Jason Young 

Blog : http://blogs.imeta.co.uk/jyoung/Default.aspx

Clive Skipper

Blog : http://blogs.imeta.co.uk/CSkipper/Default.aspx

Twitter : http://twitter.com/cliveskipper

iMeta Technologies Ltd

Blogs : http://blogs.imeta.co.uk

Twitter - http://twitter.com/iMeta_UK

Enjoy.

Rob..

I’ve finally got around to publishing a short list of agile testing resources.

Agile Testing UK – Another NING forum but seems to have some good content and they meet up regularly - http://londonagiletesting.ning.com/forum

Practical Agile Testing with Lisa Crispin or Janet Gregory – Their book Agile Testing : A Practical Guide for Testers and Agile Teams is really good and now skills matter are offering a course with either Lisa or Janet - http://skillsmatter.com/course/agile-testing/lisa-crispin-agile-testing-workshop

Agile Testing Days Conference - http://www.agiletestingdays.com/

Getting Real – Free online book about how the company 37 signals (Basecamp, Highrise, Backpack and Campfire suite of internal tools) develop software. It’s kind of agile, kind of lean, kind of ‘just get it done’ – good read - http://gettingreal.37signals.com/toc.php

Agile Testing overview from one of the founding members of the Agile Manifesto - http://www.exampler.com/testing-com/agile/

Tasty Cupcakes – Games, learning and ideas for teaching agile -http://blog.tastycupcakes.com/

Yahoo rollout of Agile - http://www.campustechnology.com/Articles/2008/02/Lessons-from-a-Yahoo-Scrum-Rollout.aspx

UI Design last? - http://parlezuml.com/blog/?postid=760

James Lyndsay’s article on testing in an agile environment - http://submissions.agile2008.org/files/Testing%20in%20an%20agile%20environment.pdf

Elisabeth Hendrickson’s article on Agile Testing: http://testobsessed.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/AgileTestingOverview.pdf

Ray Claridge is putting out some good blogs too on Tester Troubles - http://www.testertroubles.com/

Enjoy.

Rob..

I found myself needing to test failed and intercepted network requests the other day. But i needed to see how they would manifest themselves in the UI so i needed a tool that intercepted the messages between the browser and the webserver. This called for a proxy tool.

After a bit of searching my colleague Neil Rees (http://blogs.imeta.co.uk/nrees/Default.aspx) recommended CharlesProxy. (http://www.charlesproxy.com/)

Simply download the trial edition and Firefox add-on (Not sure it works with Firefox 3.5 though) Both are available from the Charles Download page (http://www.charlesproxy.com/download/)

When you run the app for the first time you will see the following page

 Charles Proxy Main Window

Set the Firefox Proxy

First thing to do is to set the Firefox add-on as the proxy. Open the Proxy Menu Option and click the Mozilla Firefox Proxy option.

 Setting Firefox as proxy

As you will see, the ‘Recording (Session)’ will be running. This means that Charles is monitoring and capturing all requests going through Firefox.

Note: Make sure you only have the tabs open you need otherwise all other tab activity (refreshes etc) will also be captured.

Start Recording

Once you have set this then simply start surfing away on the site you want to test. You will see that all of the traffic is captured in the ‘Structure’ tab on the left.

Showing pages and subpages collected through browsing. Example here is using Charles’ own website 

Each website you visit will have it’s own root folder. All pages within this site will be shown in the tree.

Throttling Bandwidth

A cool feature of Charles is the ability to throttle bandwidth. Great for testing performance and reliability across multiple network speeds.

Open up Proxy > Throttle Settings.

Tick the ‘Enable Throttling’ checkbox if it’s not already checked. Dropping down the throttle preset drop down allows you to choose some already defined speeds. Or you can specify your own.

Preset throttle settings in Charles

Once the ‘Enable Throttling’ is checked then the ‘Proxy  > Throttling’ will have a tick next to it:

 Throttling enabled

Simply run through your site and observe, explore and report. The site will now be running through a throttled bandwidth.

Intercepting / Withholding web requests

Once you have recorded some requests (or you know exactly which request you want to intercept) you can start applying a breakpoint. A breakpoint, will intercept and hold the relevant web request until you decide whether to let it continue, if at all.

To add a breakpoint open Proxy > Breakpoints.

Then enable breakpoints using the checkbox. Then add a new breakpoint. Then complete the relevant information.

 Adding a breakpoint

Or an easier way. Simply navigate in the structure column to the page you want to breakpoint and right click on it and click ‘breakpoint’.

 Right click menu on website

Nothing significant will show other than the small red button on the menu bar will now be depressed. This button toggles breakpoints on/off. If you re-open breakpoints from Proxy > Breakpoints then you will see there is now a new breakpoint in the list. Double click it to bring up the breakpoint information. Shown in the screen below.

 Breakpoint information

Now revisit the website and navigate to the page that has the breakpoint applied. Charles will now stop all requests and present the following screen.

Note, there will be multiple requests (POST, GET) and there could be multiple of these, so make sure you stop/modify or execute the right request.

  Breakpoint in action

There are now three options.

You can cancel which cancels that breakpoint and allows the message to continue as usual.

You can abort, which will snaffle the message, resulting in page / request not found. You will obviously get different results for GET and POST requests.

 Aborted breakpoint

Or you can execute. This will simply execute the request. But the cool thing with execute is that you can edit the request before executing. Open the ‘Edit Request’ tab at the top and then edit away. (Note: there are more tab options at the bottom)

 Edit breakpoint then execute

Once complete. Execute the request and see what happens.

Summary

Charles Proxy is one of the best tools I’ve encountered for managing web requests. It’s given me some great insight in to some of our products and how they behave during requests and failures.

Overall it’s a good tool for simulating network failures, potential man in the middle tampering and general network throttling.

By the way, the trial version runs for 30 minutes and then closes but it’s really not that expensive to buy anyway.

I've been investigating accessibility and usability recently for a new project I'm working on. I thought I'd share some of the resources I've found that might be of use to others.

I'm testing against the WCAG 2.0 standard, but there are very few resources available that can automatically check against that standard. It was only introduced in 2008 and so most tools are still checking against WCAG 1.0. There are some interesting changes between the two, but that's not for this blog post.

One of the best resources I've found so far, believe it or not, is twitter. There are so many usability and accessibility companies, consultants, designers, programmers and testers all tweeting about the topic that it inevitably leads to a wealth of information. So following the right people means you get to know of all sorts of useful resources.

But ultimately, they point to resources and tools. Here's a run down of some of the ones I'm looking at using:

NOTE: Conformance to WCAG standards cannot be proved by just using an automated tool. The automated checkers will obviously give you an indication where you have failed. However, if you have passed (according to checker) it is still possible for the site/page to not comply. An example would be the ALT text that goes alongside an image. An auto tool can check whether it is there. What it cannot check though is that if the ALT text is relevant to the image it is describing. For example, a picture of an Apple with an ALT text of Pear is a fail. A tool can't tell you that.

WCAG guidelines

Actual Guidelines- http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/

Overview of WCAG - http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/wcag.php

Understanding WCAG 2.0 - http://www.w3.org/TR/UNDERSTANDING-WCAG20/

Techniques for WCAG 2.0 - http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20-TECHS/

Firefox 2.0 add-ons

TAW3 en un clic - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1158

This is a really good add on which gives you a link in the Tools menu: Tools > TAW It

When clicked it grabs the page you are on and gives you a new page with each validation error, query or warning highlighted with relevant failure information included. It also gives you a good list of areas that require human checking. Their website also offers a validation process as well as a WCAG 2.0 Beta checking site. (http://www.tawdis.net/ingles.html?lang=en)

Firefox Accessibility Extension - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5809

Useful firefox add on which gives you a summary report and other validation checking. This combined with the TAW add on is a really good combination.

Online Checkers

W3C validator - http://validator.w3.org/

Section 508 and WCAG checking tool - http://checkwebsite.erigami.com/accessibility.html

Luminosoty Colour Contrast Ratio Checker - http://juicystudio.com/services/luminositycontrastratio.php

T.A.W checker (as mentioned in Firefox add on section) - http://www.tawdis.net/ingles.html?lang=en

Cynthia WCAG checker - http://www.contentquality.com/

Etre checker - http://www.etre.com/tools/accessibilitycheck/

WAVE online checker -http://wave.webaim.org/

Other Resources

Some useful information on what is involved in WCAG 2.0 over 1.0 - http://jimthatcher.com/index.htm

Story of uptake across globe - http://www.dingoaccess.com/accessibility/adopting-wcag-2/

The Pollenshop accessibility experts - http://www.thepollenshop.co.uk/accessible_web_services/standards_compliance/wcag_compliance.asp

User Vision - http://www.uservisionblog.co.uk/2009/07/10/recommended-reading-week-1-accessibility/

This checks the readability of your content - http://www.online-utility.org/english/readability_test_and_improve.jsp

This checks the Online Colour Contrasts - http://www.accesskeys.org/tools/color-contrast.html

Colour blindness checker - http://www.etre.com/tools/colourblindsimulator/

Online Image checker (checks images for contrasts) - http://juicystudio.com/services/image.php

Browser resolution checker - http://www.markhorrell.com/tools/browser.html

This is an awesome little site that has people randomly taking part in click testing and then describing what they found - http://www.fivesecondtest.com/

Accessibility Devices

JAWS screenreader - http://www.freedomscientific.com/products/fs/jaws-product-page.asp

Good screen reader tool with lots of configurations and options. Does a really good of reading the website content. Probobably one of the most popular screen readers.

Thunder screenreader - http://www.screenreader.net/

I find this tool extremely useful. A really good screenreader for reading sites. Works well with Webbie.

Zoom Text - http://www.aisquared.com/products

This is probably one of the best and most comprehensive tools I've yet to see. It not only allows a whole host of screen zoom options (lens, whole, line, docked, freeze, overlay) but it also does screen reading superbly too. It can read highlighted text, whole pages, typed words or letters and has all of the usual features such as grammar on/off.

There are a multitude of devices available for the accessibility market, a great list of most of them is here:

www.tricare.mil/cap/acc_sol/Assistive_Technology.cfm

Rob..