Interview with Ady Stokes

Ady Stokes

Twitter: @A11y_Ady

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adystokes/

Interview

Where are you in your testing journey?

My wife, who came to Estonia and Poland for conferences calls me, ‘the oldest man at the conference’! So you could say I’m well travelled in testing. I was trained as an auditor in the 90’s which you could argue was the start of my testing journey. Since then I’ve gone from learning testing to teaching and mentoring alongside learning as much as I can to be an accessibility advocate. I hope to continue helping the next group of diverse testers come into our amazing profession and community.

The best bug you have ever found?

I always struggle with this type of questions because ‘it depends’. When I was new to software testing my favorite was a field that took 56 lower case ‘i’ (the smallest character on the keyboard) and 16 capital ‘W’ (the largest). Nothing particularly spectacular but the field was a number field and should only take decimal 2,2 or 99.99 max!

Advice you would give to Testers?

I suppose the main part here to be applicable to as many as possible is think about thinking. We are full of biases and assumptions which are enhanced by system 1 thinking so it is easy for us to reach a conclusion quickly. If we think about that thought process we can find so many other things to consider, including how people who use the software/app/product etc. differently from us. E.g. keyboard only users, those who use screen readers, those with varying levels of literacy and so on.

What does winning mean to you?

I find it incredulous that anyone has even heard of me let alone being nominated and winning something for testing. I still feel so proud to be included on this list of brilliant testers and wonderful people.