[Accessibility-testing] Building the other text-matrix axis (plus meeting reminder)

[Jason McIntosh]

OK, following up on Monday’s meeting discussion...

Here is an excerpt from the mock survey that Deborah made a few months back, as it makes a very useful reference point for this discussion:

> When testing this game, did you use:
> 	A screen reader? If so, what screen reader and what version?
> 	Magnification? If so, what tools did you use to magnify and what version, if applicable?
> 	Dictation? If so, what tools and what version?
> 	A mouse?
> 	Other questions as applicable, e.g., questions regarding sound, timed tasks, etc

What I’d like to build for our purposes is an list of highest-priority accessibility conditions that we’d like to see tested for every platform. (Where “platform” means a single tuple of game and interpreter, e.g. the Inform test game running in Quixe via Firefox on Windows.) I expect that this list will be similar but not identical to the “Did you use…?” list that will appear on our final survey to testers.

My understanding is that by making this ideal list ahead of time, we’ll be able to see during the testing period that, for example, the Inform-Quixe-Firefox-Windows test has plenty of survey replies from screen-reader users, but none from dictation users. In that case, we can correct for that during the testing period by encouraging more dictation-using testers to run that test. (Right?)

Refining my list from yesterday a bit, and leaving aside for now the nitty-gritty of brand names and version numbers, I come up with this “80 percent” list for IF accessibility contexts:

• Visual
	• Uses screen reader
	• Uses Braille display
	• Uses magnifier
	• Does not see non-text graphics
• Auditory
	• Does not hear game audio
• Motor
	• Uses dictation software

…Which is a start, I hope! Assuming I am barking up the right tree her
e (and tell me if I’m not!), what else should be on this list? What shouldn’t be?

(I don’t think that Braille displays per se have come up in our conversation, but I have made the acquaintance of least a couple of blind IF fans who do use them, so there it is for now...)