User Acceptance Testing (UAT) is the scheduled periodic testing and acceptance of an organization’s software application (often proprietary) or website project by actual users as it advances through the development process toward a release. AT-UAT includes the expertise of experienced access technology users to verify that the goals for compliance / accessibility / usability are on track for the product. AT-UAT is the developers’ yardstick to ensure that the design and development goals for 508 Compliance (or compliance to any of many accessibility and usability standards) are included (or perpetuated) in the next release. AT-UAT is normally one of the last services to follow on the options and recommendations for remediation from an Access Analysis or complete accessibility project.
AT-UAT testing defines specific navigational, accessibility and usability objectives and tests and retests these objectives using several different teams, compares and evaluates the team results in order to verify the current status of specified objectives. It is significant that the AT-UAT team members include experienced accessibility users as this promotes not only compliance achievement but true usability.
AT-UAT can be used at the end of a project for confirmation or can be used periodically throughout the development life cycle to verify milestone achievement at key points in the cycle. The milestone approach is recommended because the earlier a problem is discovered, the less costly it is to fix. At each point in the AT-UAT cycle, a test plan and resulting report is generated that highlights problems encountered and suggested remediation actions.
AT-UAT is a support service that you can leverage for regular full regression testing or on-demand for specific issues whenever you need it. Either way, our AT-UAT team is ready for test cycles that will help you ensure that the design and development goals for an application or Website project are included and have been met through careful auditing using screen access products in the hands of experienced users. AT-UAT is the developer’s friend because adding compliance / accessibility / usability at the end of a project opens the potential to create enormous unanticipated costly issues that could have been avoided if they were project goals and not release add-ons.
