Testing Insert Date and Time functionality

One of the areas I took over when coming to the OneNote team is the functionality that inserts the current date and/or time into a page.  You can try this by typing  :

SHIFT+ALT +T to insert the current time

SHIFT+ALT+D to insert the current date

SHIFT+ALT+F to insert the current date and time

As far as features go, this is very straightforward, has been around for quite a well and doesn't get much smaller. 

I want to look at the accessibility testing for this simple functionality.  Accessibility is the word we use to describe the capability of our software to be used by people with poor (or no) vision, hearing and the like.  You can see our guidelines at https://www.microsoft.com/enable. 

One of the test cases for this feature consisted of verifying (and believe me, testers use the word "verify" daily) the text inserted was visible and legible in high contrast screen resolutions.  Windows XP shipped with 4 high contrast modes (named1,2, black and white).  My testing will make sure I go into each mode and complete my verifications.  While here, I will change the system font sizes to ensure functionality with the new size.  I do not expect anything to happen here since we use the user fonts on the page, but there may be some drawing problems with nearby text near the edge of the page, or the developer might have implemented the wrong font.  I'll make sure we use the correct font color once we go into high contrast mode. 

Keyboard accessibility I get "for free."  It's the way to access the feature, so I'm covered here.  I'll make sure the date and time text can be seen properly with the Microsoft Magnifier. 

Overall, I estimate the feature will take about 30 minutes per supported platform to test.  Office 2007 ran on three different platforms (Windows XP, Windows 2003 and Vista), so I'll need an hour and a half to finish this accessibility testing.  I'd love to simplify the three platforms, but since theming is enabled by default on Windows XP, disabled by default on Window 2003 and replaced by Aero in Vista, I don't think I'll be able to do that.  If this would have been a weeks worth of testing per platform, I would definitely see where I could enable theming on Windows 2003 to see if I could simplify my test matrix one step. 

Ultimately, though, this is such a small area to test with accessibility it's just as easy to use each machine.  This feature is only supposed to insert a font (from an accessibility point of view), and as long as we use the right font, I can rely on the fonts being tested for accessibility to save me hours of testing.

Comments, questions, concerns and criticisms always welcome,

John