Almost daily, we see reports of software failures that harm enterprises and impact the brand, putting testing organizations and their efforts in the spotlight. Fortunately, testers are now in one of the most exciting times in the software industry’s history!

Organizations look at two ways to reduce repetitive testing costs-automation and offshoring. Although either can work, combining these two approaches has the promise of even more savings to organizations by freeing up their employees for more creative testing. Because both automation and offshoring are complex operations in and of themselves, combining them adds more risks and challenges that can lead to disappointment and a "double backlash" instead of a "double benefit" if not implemented with proven approaches. Test automation pioneer Hans Buwalda shares his personal "adventures" with offshoring and outsourcing automated testing. Organized along major challenges he's faced-methodology, automation technology, cultural differences, long distances, and hard to deal with time differences-Hans presents a set of failure patterns that are common in offshoring and offers practical suggestions for how to overcome them.

Although full test automation of the user experience (UX) is impractical and unwise, there are approaches that can save you time and resources. At eBay, Julian Harty and his colleagues are finding new ways to automate as much of UX testing for eBay.com as is reasonably possible. Even with a highly complex, web-based application, they have found that automation finds many potential problems in the user experience-even in rich application scenarios. Julian shares a practical experience report of their successes together with the barriers and boundaries they discovered-detecting navigation issues, layout bugs, and problematic differences between the behavior of various web browsers. Learn from eBay's experiences why automated testing can be beguiling and, paradoxically, increase the chances of missing critical problems if you chose to rely mainly or even solely on the automated tests.

Because 10% to 20% of the general population has disabilities that can impact their ability to use software, systems should be developed to accommodate their needs. Even though web accessibility requirements are included in many development projects, they are often not fully understood and verified during testing. Join David Leistner as he examines the Web Accessibility Initiative and Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act. First, David explains what web accessibility is, its importance, and who it affects. Next, he introduces the types of technology available for testing compliance and shows how to use analysis tools in testing for accessibility. Gain an understanding of the issues and alternatives with web accessibility development and ways that testers can ensure that people with disabilities can access the web and Internet-access they deserve and, in some cases, are entitled by law to have.