Web Accessibility Evaluation

How do you check to see if your Web pages are accessible?

There are many software tools designed to help web masters check their sites for accessibility. If you are just getting started, it is probably a good idea for you to take a look at our list of programs that perform accessibility evaluations. Regardless of which one you choose, all of these products will catch many errors, but do not forget that you will still need to perform manual checks yourself. If you are going to use Bobby or A-prompt, you may wish to view our tutorial for using these programs. If you are in the UW System then you can download a free copy of AccVerify.

Choose an accessibility checking program

Step one is to find an accessibility checker that you like. There are many others to choose from and you can view our list of programs that perform accessibility evaluations. Regardless of which one you choose, they will catch many errors, but you will still have to look at your pages manually to check them for some accessibility problems. If you are going to use Bobby or A-prompt, we have a tutorial for using Bobby or A-prompt.

A word of caution about accessibility checking programs

Without exception, all of the products now on the market will provide you with many false positives. For this reason it may seem overwhelming when you first look at a report, but keep in mind that many of the errors or warnings generated by the software may not represent problems at all. Nonetheless, it is probably a good idea to view a complete report for the first time in order to understand the precise issues for which the accessibility checker is looking. After that it's probably best to limit the checks that the program performs.

Limiting the Checks that an accessibility checking program performs

If you are using Bobby, we have a list of specific checks that can limit the number of false positives generated by the program. In general we suggest limiting the checks to elements that are very easy for a computer to identify. For example, you should probably always have your program check for alt text for images. You can view our list of checks that bobby should perform for examples.

Manually checking pages for accessibility problems

There are certain problems that a computer program simply cannot check. For example, a computer cannot identify the difference between a table used for layout and a table used for data. Thus, in order to completely check a Web site for accessibility, you will need to look at each page to verify whether there are any problems. To help you understand what you will need to look for, please look at our tutorial for performing manual accessibility checks.

Using Firefox or Mozilla to manually check for accessibility problems

The Firefox or Mozilla browser can help you with manual checks. You can download an extension for Firefox or Mozilla called Web developer that will easily let you spot problems in your Web pages. Both the Web browser and the extension are free. Continue on to our Firefox Web developer tutorial to learn where to download the browser, the extension, and how to use it to check pages for accessibility, even without using an accessibility checking program first.