[Sigia-l] Accessibility Testing Tool

[Brenda Janish]

Not to sound preachy, but *knowledge* is the best tool for ensuring 
accessibility. The tools are only useful if you know what they're looking 
for, and if you know how to interpret their suggestions (including allowing 
for special cases in your code that generate false alerts in the 
evaluation).  They will also only verify about 1/3 of the things you need 
to do just for Section 508 -- the rest of the checkpoints require "human 
judgment"-- i.e., knowledge.

Having said that...

- If you use Dreamweaver for HTML, the LIFT plug-in is good while you're 
developing.

- Bobby and LIFT are both good tools for verifying the things that can be 
verified automatically.

- Opera browser has some nice display options that will allow you to see 
your site the way users of assistive technology will see it.
http://www.opera.com/

- IBM Homepage Reader is a screen reader (free 30-day trial 
available).  Highly recommended for testing the usability of your page for 
blind users, even though most of them will likely be using a different 
screen reader.  But HPR is the most affordable option for QA purposes.
http://www-306.ibm.com/able/solution_offerings/hpr.html

- Making sure your HTML and CSS validate will get you most of the way to 
accessibility.  Of course, this also assumes you are separating content 
from presentation by using CSS for visual layout and semantically correct 
HTML for markup.
http://validator.w3.org/
http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

- Some good sites for learning how to design and build accessible sites 
(there are many, these are my favorites):
Accessify: http://www.accessify.com
WebAIM: http://www.webaim.org/
Dive into Accessibility: http://diveintoaccessibility.org/
Jim Thatcher's 508 course: http://jimthatcher.com/webcourse1.htm
A List Apart: http://alistapart.com/topics/accessibility/

Also: If you're in the U.S., and you're working on a site that is legally 
obligated to be 508-compliant (i.e., any site or organization funded in 
part or in whole by government money), be sure to check your state's 
accessibility policy... in most cases it's a little stricter than the 
minimum Section 508 standards.




At 11:39 AM 12/8/2004, Jeanpierre Caramanica wrote:
>Hi, all.  I'm working on a project where accessibility
>is a major requirement.  My question is which tool
>have people found to be the most useful for their
>projects (i.e. developers, etc.)?
>
>I've seen the list of accessibility evaluation tools
>on the W3 site at:
>http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/existingtools.html#General.
>
>Thanks.
>
>Jeanpierre