On this month’s podcast, we’re delighted to be joined by the renowned (and SEO-friendly) Viv Richards, for a chat about visual regression testing which definitely doesn’t take any diversions into discussions about cricket.

If you’re stumped by the concept of visual regression testing, if you’re bowled over by the number of different tools that are available in the marketplace, or if you’re worried about being caught out by focusing on automating the wrong things, there’s a variety of advice on offer within this month’s episode.

Viv’s musical selections include some classic earworms, one of which achieves a significant Testers’ Island milestone, and you can find out which boy-band member manages to have one of his solo tracks selected before any of his band’s offerings.

This episode is sponsored by TestProject, the world's first 100% free test automation platform for Web, Android, iOS and API testing, trusted by over 80,000 users in the testing community. TestProject helps testers and developers ensure quality with speed, by eliminating maintenance & setup hassles and empowering Selenium & Appium with AI self-healing technology. No matter your skillset, TestProject has all the tools you need to ensure a top-notch automation experience, using advanced codeless features or open source SDK compatible with native Selenium APIs. To top it off, you also get to leverage their useful Addons library, out-of-the-box beautiful test reports, seamless integrations into your CI/CD pipelines, worldwide team collaboration options to boost efficiency, and all of this at no cost. Try out TestProject today.

Podcast Links:

Ministry of Testing UI Automation Week

The other Viv Richards, if you don’t know what the intro is all about

Leonardo Giroto - Visual Regression Testing overview

Selenium

Martin Fowler - The Practical Test Pyramid

Happo and Percy (other tools are available!)

Viv’s self-built C# visual testing tool on GitHub

Ministry of Testing: Web API Automation Experience Report - Beth Marshall and Viv Richards

The 7 Habits of Highly Successful Testers podcast series

GitLab - Embracing Asynchronous Communication

Postman

Leanpub - Around the World with 80 Software Testers

Viv on Twitter: @11vlr

Regular Links:

Listen to and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes and SoundCloud

Sign up to be a guest on the show

Testers' Island Discs playlist on Spotify

Testers' Island Discs reading list on Goodreads

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Ever wondered what's involved when you write an article for Ministry of Testing? In this podcast, Mark introduces our two editors Amy Brown and Gareth Waterhouse. The three discuss experiences and thoughts on writing and share advise for potential future authors looking to write their first article and beyond.

If you'd like to write for Ministry of Testing, you can learn more about how on our contribute page

Adam Leon Smith talks to Marie Drake about Cypress and her new workshop.  They talk about the benefits of Cypress, who should try it out, some misconceptions, and plenty more!

This podcast is sponsored by Applitools who invite you to download the Modern Cross-Browser Testing Report -- which compiles 3,112 hours of cross-environment testing data, based on a responsive e-commerce app, tested cross 21 browser and viewport combinations.

It is the most comprehensive study of its kind to date. The report focuses on:

Click to get access to the Modern Cross-Browser Testing Report.

Mark speaks with Lena Wiberg the creator of the new testing card deck 'Would Heu-Risk It?'. The two talk about where the idea for the cards came from, how the cards were created and how Lena hopes they will be used by teams to aid their testing and improve their quality.

A happy new year to all! Deborah Reid finds herself as the first guest to be marooned on the island in 2021, to talk to us about getting started with accessibility testing, in support of her upcoming accessibility course which will be released on the Ministry of Testing Dojo in April.

We discuss a wide range of different accessibility needs, which can sometimes include temporary limitations that we don’t think of as accessibility problems. There are tips on simulating accessibility within your usability testing, some shout-outs for tools, advice on getting issues fixed, and we look at the growing legal imperative which will make such problems difficult to ignore in the future.

We also open with some chatter about our comparative experiences in working with online retail/services during the weirdest of weird years, including the challenges of predicting traffic spikes, and how we’ve all had to iterate our performance/scalability to keep up.

On the music front, there are some upbeat selections, some wedding favourites, some long-overdue classics, and some delightfully childish singalongs.

Podcast Links:

Deborah on Twitter: @deborah_reid19

Bloom and Wild

Rev

Paw Patrol

Full Fact: How many people have a disability?

GOV.UK: 2010 Equality Act

W3C: A Cautionary Tale of Inaccessibility: 2000 Sydney Olympics website

Section508.gov: US accessibility law

JAWS screen reader

WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines)

A history of the accessibility tool “Bobby”

PA11y

WAVE web accessibility evaluation tool

Lighthouse

Colour Contrast Analyser

Neil’s recommended accessibility resources from the MoT site:

Article - Matt Obee: A Software Tester’s Guide to Web Accessibility

Activity - 30 Days of Accessibility Testing

Video - James Sheasby Thomas: Accessibility Testing Crash Course (TestBash Manchester 2017)

Video - Elizabeth Fiennes - Accessibility for Beginners

Video - Louise Gibbs - Accessibility Experience Report (Test.Bash Online 2020)

Video - Ady Stokes - Getting Started with Mobile Accessibility Testing (TestBash Manchester 2020)

Video - Crystal Preston - Accessibility Testing 101 (TestBash San Francisco 2019)

Plus Deborah’s course will be coming in April!

Regular Links:

Listen to and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes and SoundCloud

Sign up to be a guest on the show

Testers' Island Discs playlist on Spotify

Testers' Island Discs reading list on Goodreads

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In this Meet The Instructor Podcast, we meet Beren Van Daele whose workshop is 'RiskStorming Online'

The Meet the Instructor mini series is a collection of short podcasts with our instructors for the 2020/21 99 Minute Workshop series. Each podcast gives you an opportunity to get to know the instructor and what they are covering in their workshop. So you can discover which workshop is the right one for you.

To learn more about the 99 Minute Workshop on Testing, visit the Ministry of Testing events page

In this Meet The Instructor Podcast, we meet Ady Stokes whose workshop is 'Interactive Accessibility Quiz'

The Meet the Instructor mini series is a collection of short podcasts with our instructors for the 2020/21 99 Minute Workshop series. Each podcast gives you an opportunity to get to know the instructor and what they are covering in their workshop. So you can discover which workshop is the right one for you.

To learn more about the 99 Minute Workshop on Testing, visit the Ministry of Testing events page

In this Meet The Instructor Podcast, we meet Ali Haydar whose workshop is 'Mocks and Testability'

The Meet the Instructor mini series is a collection of short podcasts with our instructors for the 2020/21 99 Minute Workshop series. Each podcast gives you an opportunity to get to know the instructor and what they are covering in their workshop. So you can discover which workshop is the right one for you.

To learn more about the 99 Minute Workshop on Testing, visit the Ministry of Testing events page

In this Meet The Instructor Podcast, we meet Lee Marshall whose workshop is 'An Introduction to SQL for testers'

The Meet the Instructor mini series is a collection of short podcasts with our instructors for the 2020/21 99 Minute Workshop series. Each podcast gives you an opportunity to get to know the instructor and what they are covering in their workshop. So you can discover which workshop is the right one for you.

To learn more about the 99 Minute Workshop on Testing, visit the Ministry of Testing events page

In this Meet The Instructor Podcast, we meet Butch Mayhew whose workshop is 'Uncovering the Power of Browser DevTools'

The Meet the Instructor mini series is a collection of short podcasts with our instructors for the 2020/21 99 Minute Workshop series. Each podcast gives you an opportunity to get to know the instructor and what they are covering in their workshop. So you can discover which workshop is the right one for you.

To learn more about the 99 Minute Workshop on Testing, visit the Ministry of Testing events page