User testing

Recruitment

With 15 million members, it’s essential we recruit and test our products and services with the full spectrum of the population, including those who:

• use assistive technologies
• have cognitive difficulties
• have motor impairments.

It’s vital that participants are part of your target audience and not recruited on their disability type alone. (For more on recruitment see this article on Research)

Timings

Testing is most beneficial at an early stage of a project, because it is likely to reveal issues we couldn’t have predicted and this gives us time to tackle them. However, the code needs to be sufficiently mature to test with users of assistive technology and motor impairments. As well as usability testing, you should factor in content testing with real content (created by a content designer) to gauge comprehension.

Testing should also take place at regular iterations in the design process.

Extra considerations

Including accessibility considerations in our testing should not substantially change or lengthen the process. However, you may need to factor in a little longer for:

• planning
• recruitment
• the sessions themselves. In reality mistakes often take longer to recover from when using a screen reader.

Finally, it’s understandable to feel nervous about using the correct terminology with participants in a session, or not being hugely experienced with screen readers. Try to echo the language participants use, and make sure you do your homework on the technology and tools involved.