Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools

Contributed by Jim Byrne

Despite the fact that I'm listed as the author of this page, it was the work of another member - not sure who? Contact me if it is your page and I'll restore your name as author.

Here are some tools that perform Web Accessibility Evaluation Online:

From WebThing:

• Page Valet : http://valet.webthing.com/page/ : markup validation.
• Acessibility Valet : http://valet.webthing.com/access/url.html : accessibility evaluation.
• Link Valet : http://valet.webthing.com/link/ : link checker.
• Cg-Eyes : http://valet.webthing.com/cg-eye : script and form diagnose.

From SSB Technologies:

• AskAlice : http://askalice.ssbtechnologies.com:8080/ssb/aa/anon/index.jsp : send email with web accessibility evaluation results.

From HiSoftware.Com:

• Cynthia Says Portal : http://www.cynthiasays.com/default.asp : online web accessibility evaluation.

From Ministério de Trabajo Y Assuntos Sociales:

• T.a.W. - Test Accesibilidad Web : http://www.tawdis.net/ : online web accessibility evaluation. Spanish website.

From WebAIM:

• Wave 3.0 : http://www.wave.webaim.org/index.jsp : online web accessibility evaluation.

From WebxTutti:

• Torquemada : http://www.webxtutti.it/testa_en.htm : online web accessibility evaluation. Italian site.

From Watchfire:

• Bobby : http://bobby.watchfire.com/bobby/html/en/index.jsp : online web accessibility evaluation.
• WebXACT : http://webxact.watchfire.com/ : online web accessibility, quality and privacy evaluation.

From Toronto University :

• A-Prompt : http://aprompt.snow.utoronto.ca/index.html : online web accessibility evaluation.

From Jona Fenocchi and Mike Cherim:

• GrayBit: GrayBit - Experience Color Wearing Shades of Gray: a testing tool designed to visually convert a full-color web page into a grayscale rendition for the purpose of visually testing the page's perceived contrast.

On May 16 2006, Ben Scott added the following comments:

There are some good checkpoints covered over at this website. He has 3 or 4 articles on the subject:

Evaluating website accessibility part 2, Basic Checkpoints

Main points he covers in relation to software is using following Firefox extensions:

• Fangs screenreader emulator: http://www.standards-schmandards.com/index.php?2004/11/22/8-fangs-release-05
• Web Developer Toolbar: http://chrispederick.com/work/webdeveloper/

I use the Web Developer Toolbar to turn lots of things off quickly for a page:

• javascript
• images
• background colours
• background images only
• css
• change layout to small screen rendering
• highlight names of div ids and classes
• linearise the tables
• check images without alt tags
• check links without title tags
• display colours used as html equivalent in a square

It also has access to most of the validators and online web accessibility checkers.

I use the colour tools at http://wellstyled.com/tools/colorscheme2/index-en.html as I feel this is the best tool out there. Use it to create colour schemes and check different forms of colour blindness against what you have set up.

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