NOTE: All already certified Trusted Testers and Baseline work/discussions should use Trusted Tester 5.1 or above, the updated version of this process at https://github.com/Section508Coordinators/TrustedTester5.1.
This version of Trusted Tester should only be used for the current certification training and exam until it has been updated to align with 5.1 or above.
The Trusted Tester test process was originally created by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Office of Accessible Systems and Technology (OAST) and later adopted by several other U.S. federal agencies. The Interagency Trusted Tester Program now manages and maintains the Trusted Tester process. This repository contains updates to the Trusted Tester process, while in draft, to align to the revised Section 508 Standards. The Trusted Tester process incorporates the "Harmonized Processes for Section 508 Testing: Baseline Tests for Software & Web Accessibility" version version 3, which has also been revised to align to the revised Section 508 Standards.
The mission of the Interagency Trusted Tester Program is to promote a unified, consistent, sharable, and repeatable test and evaluation approach for Section 508 standards conformance that federal agencies can implement throughout their information technology lifecycle to reduce redundant testing and improve cost savings. This effort supports an overall vision of improving IT accessibility across government through unified requirements, reviews [test and evaluation], reporting, remediation, and reuse. In January of 2017 the U.S. Access-Board released the final rule to revise the Section 508 standards. The revised Section 508 Standards now rely primarily on the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0, Level (A) and (AA) Success Criteria and conformance requirements as the “new” Section 508 standards for software and Web interfaces. As part of the Federal Chief Information Officers Council, Accessibility Community of Practice (ACOP), the Trusted Tester process is being revised to support the revised section 508 standards. The working group revising the harmonized evaluation baseline and the Trusted Tester process is composed of multiple Federal agency members.
- The working group will update the Trusted Tester test process to incorporate as many procedures from the Harmonized Processes for Section 508 Testing as are feasible (e.g., to the degree they are repeatable, scalable, and accurate). Any revised section 508 standards which we find are not able to be created as repeatable, scalable, and accurate will be noted, and such procedures will be left to individual organizations to determine how to evaluate.
- The working group will update approved evaluation tools which are found to be accurate, scalable, and available to aid in manual testing.
- The working group will create and validate test procedures and tools with test content to the best of our ability to support selection and refinement of final updated test processes.
- The DHS Trusted Tester process and Trusted Tester certification will also be updated to fully align with the updated harmonized baseline evaluation process.
The working group will post proposed test processes to this repository in GitHub as work progresses. The working group will post test content to GitHub as work progresses. The working group will update items as refinements are made as we move to final of test processes.
You are welcome to monitor group progress, create your own forks of the proposed test processes and propose changes (via pull requests) to improve them, and submit test content to help validate test processes and tools.
The working group will do our best to review any updated test processes from submitters, will attempt to make use of any test content, and share results as progress is made.
The harmonized baseline revised section 508 conformance evaluation process for web and non-web interfaces will be a foundation for creating organization-specific, aligned test procedures. The DHS Trusted Tester process update will fully align with the harmonized baseline update.
If you wish to contact the working group with suggestions you can email to accessibility@dhs.gov and include in the subject "Federal Accessibility Community of Practice: Trusted Tester Update."
Note: the working group makes no commitment to accept or use recommendations, but will do our best to review them and consider them as the update process is completed.
Currently the working group is NOT creating fully automated test procedures. This may be addressed in a subsequent update of the harmonized baseline document to facilitate agile development and dev-ops environments, reduce level of effort to perform evaluations, and broaden and deepen the scope of evaluations for larger sets of electronic content.
