Accessible design and testing in the application development process: considerations for an integrated approach

Accessible design principles should permeate virtually all phases of the application development cycle, using existing “best practices of software engineering” for accessibility purposes. This paper proposes a methodology for accessible design and testing that includes proven tools of software engineering, namely use cases and scenarios, to capture functional requirements. Guidelines developed through user testing and heuristics are made real using personas to exemplify accessibility requirements, reflecting a diversity of user capabilities and use contexts. For implementation and testing, test cases containing accessibility checkpoints are generated, based on the guidelines. Complementary to this methodology, expert reviews and user testing should be conducted for evaluation of the developed products and further refinement of the development process.