Part 2: Manual Checks for Web Accessibility

This section of the tutorial consists of a series of questions you should ask yourself when checking your web page's accessibility. Check to see which questions apply directly to the content and features on your web page. If the question does not apply to your design then simply move on to the next one. If a question is unclear to you or deals directly with some aspect of your site then read the explanitory note for that question to make sure that there are no problems.

There is a quick procedure for manual checks towards the bottom of the page.

1. Does your web page contain video or audio clips?

According to Section B of the 508 guidelines "Equivalent alternatives for any multimedia presentation shall be synchronized with the presentation." This means that any video clip must be captioned and that the captioning must be synchronized with the video. In other words it's not enough to just provide a transcript of the video. For audio clips, a text-based transcript must also be provided.

2. Does your page use color to convey information?

According to Section C of the 508 guidelines "web pages shall be designed so that all information conveyed with color is also available without color, or example from context or markup." If your page contains, for example, three buttons, all of which are of different colors, and the instructions ask browsers to click on the red button, your page would fall short of this guideline. Another problematic feature might mark in red the required fields within a form. In a similar way, Sometimes forms that have been submitted without all of the required fields having been filled in are returned with the missing items highlighted in red.

3. Does your page use a stylesheet?

According to Section D of the 508 guidelines "documents shall be organized so they are readable without requiring an associated style sheet."

In order to check your page's compliance with this guideline, you will need to view the document without its style sheet to make sure that it is still legible. The best way to do this is by creating a blank text file. After you've done this, tell your browser to use the blank text file to get its rules for formatting the page. Since the file is blank, there should not be any special Cascading Style Sheet formatting automatically being applied to the file. Follow the directions below to learn how to do this with your specific browser:

Internet Explorer 5 and 6:

Netscape 4.7:

Special note for users of Netscape 7: There is no way to turn Style Sheets off in Netscape 7.

4. Does your page contain any graphics that flicker?

According to Section J of the 508 guidelines "pages shall be designed to avoid causing the screen to flicker with a frequency greater than 2 Hz and lower than 55 Hz."

To eliminate any problems on this front--and To be safe--simply do not use flickering images on your web page. This should eliminate any complications.

5. Does the webpage have an alternate text only page?

According to Section K of the 508 guidelines "atext-only page, with equivalent information or functionality, shall be provided to make a web site comply with the provisions of these standards, when compliance cannot be accomplished in any other way. The content of the text-only page shall be updated whenever the primary page changes."

Because there are very few pages that cannot be made accessible, creating an alternative text-only page should represent a last resort. . If there is already a pre-existing text only page on your site, you may wish to double-check to see if the page could not originally have been made accessible. Also, keep im mind that any text-only pages need to be updated concomtently with the non-accessible page so that it acurately reflects its contents.

6. Does the page use Javascript, have menus, or have anything else that changes as you move the mouse around the screen?

Images that change their appearance when you move your mouse over them generally are not a problem as long as the information on the button itself doesn't change.

According to Section L of the 508 guidelines "when pages utilize scripting languages to display content, or to create interface elements, the information provided by the script shall be identified with functional text that can be read by assistive technology."

This is potentially a tricky guideline. You should try your page with Javascript turned off and see if all of the key information on the page is still visible. You can turn JavaScript off in various browsers as follows:

Internet Explorer 5 and 6: There isn't a way to disable JavaScript.

Netscape 4.7:

Netscape 7:

Lynx: This program is not designed to use JavaScript. If your page looks fine in lynx, then your page should be within the guidelines.

Opera 6.05:

Special note: Even after making sure that the information still exits when the JavaScript is turned off, you will still need to check that it's accessible when turned on. For example, combo boxes that use Java script can cause problems because the user will be unable to scroll down through the choices with keyboard commands to select the preferred item. When attempting to explore the available options within the combo box that uses java script, someone using a screen-reader would be taken automatically to the first choice in the list when the down arrow is pressed. Anyone can tell, however, whether a combo box will cause problems. Simply check to see if something happens immediately after you have selected an item from the combo box. If you have to click on a "go" button (or something similar) before you're taken to your selection, then the combo box should work well for everyone.

7. Does your web page have any documents, applets, and/or multimedia that requires a plug-in from a user?

According to Section M of the 508 guidelines "when a web page requires that an applet, plug-in or other application be present on the client system to interpret page content, the page must provide a link to a plug-in or applet that complies with 1194.21(a) through (l)."

This guideline stipulates that your page contain a link to the website where the user can download the appropriate plugin for viewing the contents of your site. The link will need to be present on all pages that require a plug-in. Examples of files that require plug-ins include movies, audio clips, PDF files, and flash.

8. Does your site have a navigation bar that appears on every page?

According to Section O of the 508 guidelines "a method shall be provided that permits users to skip repetitive navigation links.

Since most sites today have navigation bars, it is Most likely, that your site too, has this feature. There needs to be a way for users to skip over the navigation bar without having to read it on every page. There should either be a visible link that lets the user skip the navigation bar, or else there should be an invisible link that only shows up on screen readers. The invisible link can be created by making an invisible graphic represent the link. If there is not an obvious link around the navigation bar, then you should turn off the images on the web page to check if you can still see the link. You can turn images off in various browsers as follows:

Internet Explorer 5 and 6:

Netscape 4.7: There is no way to turn the images off in Netscape 4.7.

Netscape 7:

Lynx: This program is not designed to use Images. If the skip navigation link shows up in lynx then your page should be within the guidelines.

Opera 6.05:

9. Does your page automatically do something after a timer goes off?

According to Section P of the 508 guidelines "when a timed response is required, the user shall be alerted and given sufficient time to indicate more time is required."

10. Does your page have PDF Files?

Any PDF file that was created before version 5 will have to be saved as a tagged document and marked up using accessibility methods similar to generic HTML, e.g. equivalent text for images.

Adobe has a free PDF Make Accessible plugin. You should have version 5 of Adobe Acrobat and download the Make Accessibile plug-in. It has an accessibility checker to identify some accessibility problems. It can catch things like images with no text equivalents, but you still need to look through the document to see if it makes sense.

Alternatively, an HTML or text version of the PDF file can be provided.

11. Does your page use Macromedia Flash?

A flash page will need to include a way for users to skip it and view a HTML version instead. Macromedia Flash is not accessible on its own, but you can take steps to make it more accessible when using features in Flash in version 6. For now, however, most screen readers cannot recognize the new accessibility features in Flash.


Quick Procedure for Manual Checks

This is an outline for a procedure to manually check pages quickly and efficiently. This method is described using Opera which has some very useful features for manually checking pages. However, you could do some of these checks using another browser. We would recommend that you download Opera which is free.

These checks are listed so that the most common problems are listed first. Pay attention to the first 3.

Common

  1. Skip Navigtion Link. Look for a skip navigation link. Either it will be visible or else they might be using an invisble gif. To check for an invisible gif, click on the camera icon so you can see the alt text for the images. A skip navigation link will be obvious to see. Most Web sites will fail this check.
  2. Is there a data table? If so then make sure there are proper use of header tags. In the user mode of opera, click on the box that says show stuctural elements. Any headers will show up with their <th> tag. If you don't see the <th> tag then the headers aren't there.
  3. Is there any Javascript on the pages besides rollovers? Look for pulldown menus. Some pages have rollovers that changes another image with words somewhere else on the page. That's bad.

Rare

  1. Colors. Are the colors bad? If something jumps out at you as being hard to read then write that down.
  2. Do Graphics Flicker? It's pretty obvious to see a flickering graphic.
  3. Alternative Text only Page? Only make note of this if there IS a text only page.
  4. Is there a timed response on a page? This is harder to find. You will usually find this in forms. You could also find this in Active Server Pages (ASP) that are remembering information about users as they go from page to page. ASP pages end with .asp instaed of .htm or .html.
  5. Does the page work with out a style sheet? Switch to user mode (the little person icon) to make sure things look O.K. without a style sheet. All of the text should be a Times New Roman font and very basic. Note if you see some other fonts or diffent font sizes. Problems could pop up on pages that use a Javascript menu or else use Cascading Style Sheets instead of layout tables to arrange things on a page.

Additional Checks (Non 508)

  1. Proper use of headers and lists. In the user mode of opera, click on the box that says show stuctural elements. It then highlights all of the headers and list items (<ol> or <ol>) so you can see if they are there.

Notes

  1. Once you find a couple pages without the skip navigation link then it's pretty obvious that the other pages don't have them also so you can start skipping this check and maybe just periodically check again.
  2. You only need to check for table headers when it's obvious that there is a data table. It should only take a quick glance at a page to see a data table.
  3. Menus in Javascript should be obvious to see when you quickly use the page. Just try a few mouseovers to see if anything else on the page changes.

Quick Summary of Manual Checks

  1. Check for a skip navigation link.
  2. Look for data tables.
  3. Look for Javascript.
  4. Look for Color problems.
  5. Look for flickering graphics.
  6. Look for a text only page.
  7. Look for a timed response.
  8. Look for proper headers.

This is the end of the tutorial.

Return to the Evaluation page.