QA For Web Sites

1
QA For Web Sites
Ed Bremner TASI/ILRT University of
Bristol Ed.Bremner_at_bris.ac.uk
Marieke Guy UKOLN University of
Bath M.Guy_at_ukoln.ac.uk

Brian Kelly UKOLN University of
Bath B.Kelly_at_ukoln.ac.uk
EIB
2
QA For Web Sites

• Aims Of Todays Talk
• To discuss some of the approaches currently taken
  to QA
• To summarise findings of surveys of Web sites
• To make recommendations for future QA work

EIB
3
An Introduction to QA

• What is Quality?
• Quality is the ability of your product to be
  able to satisfy your users

Assurance?

• Quality assurance is the process that
  demonstrates your product is able to satisfy your
  users

EIB
4
An Introduction to QA

• What does Quality Assurance give?
• Quality means your project is useful and
  without quality you have nothing
• Quality provides a future for project
• But quality assurance needs standards to be
  meaningful
• Quality Best Practice can only be
  considered in terms of being Fit for Purpose

QA is the opportunity to learn!
EIB
5
Approach Taken

• Two possible approaches to ensuring compliance
  with standards and best practices
• Enforce
• Inspect all projects work
• Strict auditing, with penalties for no-compliance

EIB
6
Approach Taken

• Two possible approaches to ensuring compliance
  with standards and best practices
• Encourage
• Train all project staff
• Developmental, explaining reasons for compliance,
  documenting examples of best practices and
  providing advice on implementation and monitoring

EIB
7
Approach Taken

• Two possible approaches to ensuring compliance
  with standards and best practices
• Enforce vs Encourage

QA Focus prefers to encourage!
QA Focus - a JISC-funded project, formed to
support a number of digital library development
projects
EIB
8
QA for Digitisation

• Do it once..do it right
• Project is fundamentally dependent upon the
  quality of original product
• Quality is the pre-requisite to preservation
• Quality expectations will only grow
• Delivery problems can be fixed, but capture
  problems normally cant

EIB
9
QA for Digitisation

• A multi-level approach may be taken to QA within
  the digitisation process
• Strategic QA

Carried out before digitisation starts Research
and establishing best practice standards
EIB
10
QA for Digitisation

• A multi-level approach may be taken to QA within
  the digitisation process
• Strategic QA
• Workflow QA

Formative assessment, before during
development Establishing documenting workflow
processes
EIB
11
QA for Digitisation

• A multi-level approach may be taken to QA within
  the digitisation process
• Strategic QA
• Workflow QA
• Sign-off QA

Quality Control Summative assurance at end of
each process, providing an audit history for all
QA work undertaken
EIB
12
QA for Digitisation

• A multi-level approach may be taken to QA within
  the digitisation process
• Strategic QA
• Workflow QA
• Sign-off QA
• On-going QA

Summative assurance as part of long term QA to
establish a system to report, check fix any
faults found in future
EIB
13
QA for Digitisation

• QA Focus promotes a multi-level approach to
  digitisation
• Strategic QA
• Workflow QA
• Sign-off QA
• On-going QA

High Quality Product
EIB
14
QA for Digitisation

• If you dont capture quality

• you can never deliver quality

EIB
15
QA For Web Sites

• The issues
• The Web is the main delivery mechanism for
  projects and services
• There is an increasing awareness of the
  importance of
• Accessibility
• Use of new devices (PDAs, WAP, e-books, )
• Repurposing of Web content (e.g. archiving)
• Technologies such as XSLT will support
  repurposing of valid XML resources
• But
• Invalid HTML is the norm
• Many authoring tools produce poor HTML
• Authors arent aware of the problems

MG
16
Guidelines

• We often say
• Open standards are important
• HTML, XML, XHTML, CSS, are important
• but fail to explain why and how
• JISCs QA Focus is addressing such concerns by
• Documenting example of best practices in which
  projects can share their implementation successes
  (and difficulties they experienced)
• Provide brief advice in specific aspects of the
  standards and best practices
• Surveying its communities to highlight best
  practices and areas in which improvements can be
  made
• Demonstrating use of testing tools and procedures

MG
17
Standards Best Practices

• Standards For Web
• Use compliant HTML / XHTML
• Use CSS
• Support WAI accessibility guidelines
• Best Practices For Web
• Ensure Web resources can are suitable for reuse
  and repurposing
• Where proprietary formats need to be used, flag
  them and use in most open way

MG
18
Surveying The Community

• Surveys of project Web sites have been carried
  out in order to
• Obtain a profile for the community
• Identify examples of best practices
• Identify areas in which further advice is needed
• Surveys included
• HTML CSS compliance ? Accessibility
• 404 error pages ? HTTP headers
• Repurposing resources

MG
19
Survey Philosophy

• The surveys made use of freely-available
  Web-based tools
• Methodology is open
• No software needs to be installed locally (apart
  from Web browser)
• Findings can be reproduced
• Latest results can be obtained by clicking on
  link to testing service
• The surveys typically examined project entry
  points and not entire Web site as
• This page has the highest profile
• The aim is to validate a methodology which can be
  deployed by projects themselves, not to test
  every page on behalf of the projects

MG
20
Survey Findings

• Initial set of findings available from
  lthttp//www.ukoln.ac.uk/qa-focus/surveys/web-10-2
  002/gt

MG
21
Providing Motivation

• We have found evidence of failure to comply with
  HTML standards
• There is a need to explain why compliance is
  important (and avoid the its OK in my browser
  argument) and to provide motivation for projects
  to update their tools, authoring procedures, etc.
• A further set of surveys look at repurposing of
  the project Web sites
• Availability of Web sites in the Internet Archive
• Ease of making Web sites available on a PDA
• Transformation of embedded metadata

MG
22
Repurposing Resources

• We examined the Web sites to see if they were
  available in the Internet Archive and could be
  transformed into a format for viewing on a PDA

MG
23
Transforming Resources

• Project entry points were processed by several
  online transformation services in order to
  validate and visualise embedded Dublin Core
  metadata

HTMLresource
Original page, containing embedded DC metadata
MG
24
Providing Advice

• We have
• Survey project Web sites and identified areas of
  lack of compliance with standards and best
  practices
• Demonstrated examples of the potential importance
  of compliance for repurposing resources
• In addition we need to provide
• Brief focussed advice on the standards
• Information on how to monitor compliance
• Case studies on solutions deployed by projects
  themselves
• Guidance on dealing with implementation
  difficulties and what to do when strict
  compliance is difficult to achieve

MG
25
Documentation Advice

• Advisory briefing documents are being produced
• These are
• Brief, focussed documents
• Informed by findings of the surveys

MG
26
Documentation Case Studies

• Case Studies are being commissioned
• These are
• Written by projects themselves
• Describe the solution adopted to a particular
  problem
• Include details of lessons learnt not just a
  press release!

27
Next Steps

• Extended Coverage
• We will be moving on from Web and digitisation to
  include other areas including
• Metadata ? Multimedia
• Software development ? Deployment into service
• Moving On From Automated Testing
• The initial work made use of automated testing
  tools
• Can be used remotely ? Objective
• Applicable across all projects
• We have started work on QA procedures in areas
  which are not suitable for automated checking

MG
28
Limitations

• There are a number of limitations to the work we
  have carried out so far
• Project Web sites have different purposes
  (information about the project communications
  with project partners project deliverables
  themselves etc.)
• Projects have different levels of funding,
  resources, expertise, etc.
• Projects are at different stages of development
  (and some have finished)
• The surveys are intended to demonstrate a
  methodology which projects can use for themselves

MG
29
Self Assessment Toolkit

• Further Deliverables
• We will be developing a self-assessment toolkit
  for projects to use, by individual projects or
  across project clusters
• The toolkit will consist of
• Examples of QA procedures
• Documented examples of use of testing tools
• Self-assessment questionnaires
• Advice on standards and best practices
• Case studies
• FAQs

MG
30
Questions

• Any questions?

MG