Day 36: Questions to Ask throughout the Product Life Cycle

Published on 05 Jan 2019

• journal
• was
• quality-assurance

Today wrapped up my research for the week about integrating accessibility into a product's life cycle. I ended with reviewing what a product's life cycle looks like, and how everyone can play a role during each phase to ensure accessibility is considered throughout development, rather than an afterthought.

• Read Usability in the Product Development Life Cycle (CSU).
• Browsed through Just Ask: Integrating Accessibility through Design.

Stages of a product's lifecycle with accessibility questions to ask at each stage:

• concept: does it solve a problem for people with disabilities? what are the different user needs?
• requirements: what accessibility standards/laws does it need to follow?
• design: do the mockups create any barriers?
• prototyping: does the prototype create any perceivable, operable, or understandable errors?
• development: is the code following standards? are appropriate patterns being used?
• quality assurance (QA): are automated and manual accessibility checks being run?
• user acceptance testing (UAT): does this product work for real users with disabilities?
• regression testing: when updates are made, are checks still passing?