1 QA For Web Sites Brian Kelly UKOLN University of Bath Marieke Guy UKOLN University of Bath Ed Bremner TASI/ILRT University of Bristol 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 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 An Introduction to QA 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 EIB QA is the opportunity to learn!

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! EIB QA Focus - a JISC-funded project, formed to support a number of digital library development projects

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 EIB Carried out before digitisation starts Research and establishing best practice & standards

10 QA for Digitisation A multi-level approach may be taken to QA within the digitisation process: Strategic QA Workflow QA EIB Formative assessment, before & during development Establishing & documenting workflow & processes

11 QA for Digitisation A multi-level approach may be taken to QA within the digitisation process: Strategic QA Workflow QA Sign-off QA EIB Quality Control : Summative assurance at end of each process, providing an audit history for all QA work undertaken

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

13 QA for Digitisation QA Focus promotes a multi-level approach to digitisation: Strategic QA Workflow QA Sign-off QA On-going QA EIB High Quality Product

14 QA for Digitisation …If you dont capture quality… EIB you can never deliver quality…

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 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 A small number of Web sites were not in the Internet Archive due to the robots.txt file. We will need to provide advice in this area. 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 A small number of Web sites could not be transformed. Analysis of HTTP headers indicated that this was due to incorrect HTTP headers. We will need to provide advice in this area. MG

23 Transforming Resources Project entry points were processed by several online transformation services in order to validate and visualise embedded Dublin Core metadata HTML resource Original page, containing embedded DC metadata Tidy (online) Virtual XHTML resource XSLT extraction of DC DC in RDF format Visualisation & validation of DC RDF Validator 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 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! 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