Thanks to organizers of Test:fest Conference (big applause for all the team for their efforts) I had the opportunity to attend this amazing event. What really matters to me is that I strongly boosted my A11y knowledge. At first, I listened to a presentation on accessibility test automation by Tomasz Bonior from 
. Although the presentation was quite general, it provided useful examples of tools and approaches that I’ll try to use in the near future.
But for me, the most important part of the conference were workshops run by Agnieszka Zając, Hanna Pałac and Magdalena Szeligowska from Capgemini. The workshops gave me practical insights on how to test accessibility of websites, what tools to use for this purpose, how to implement WCAG guidelines, and also how to persuade stakeholders to take care of accessibility of their products. I’m eager to use the new skills in my daily work.
I would like to highlight the keynote speech by Rik Marselis who addressed sustainability as the new quality characteristics. As I graduated in Environmental Protection, I see potential for my own development in this direction – combining QA tasks with care for the planet appeals to me a lot. Rik described sustainability as a complex issue consisting not only of environmental, but also economic and social compounds. Such approach gives it even greater significance.
In the extremely rich agenda, I’ve also picked the presentation on visual tests by Mateusz Błoch who focused on one tool called Percy designed to streamline UI tests on a daily basis. I find it really useful and presumably feasible in my company.
At last, but definitely not least, I was lucky to attend two great shows. In the first one Maciej Wyrodek (whose ITea Morning Youtube channel gives me regular updates on everything new in the testing industry) presented (with an oratorical fluency, of course) the unexpected problems with automatic tests in his company. The other presentation (which in fact was the closing show of the conference) was a one-man show by Tomasz Dubikowski who took the audience for a journey from a farmer to a professional tester by means of a game he created in the world of Greek mythical creatures and gods.
To sum up, I believe that this day was a real boost in my development and I hope that I’ll be lucky enough to attend the next year’s edition, as well.