WebAIM Blog

As part of WebAIM’s Steppingstones of Technology project, we have performed an extensive literature review to identify elements that are often cited as having an impact on users with cognitive and learning disabilities when accessing web content. To further inform us, we invite you to complete a short survey.

WebAIM’s Steppingstones project is one of the first in-depth explorations into web content and cognitive disabilities. Our literature review provided us much insight into the types of things that authors reference as having an impact on web accessibility for people with cognitive and learning disabilities. The survey results will give us more insight into the level of impact these elements might have and how useful it might be for developers to receive feedback regarding these elements in their web design. As part of this project, WebAIM will be developing an evaluation tool that will report on the cognitive load and implications of some of these design elements. The survey results will help us determine which elements we will incorporate into such a tool.

The survey is available online and takes approximately 10 minutes to complete. By completing this survey you will greatly inform our process and support the creation of better tools for increasing accessibility of web content to this important audience.

In the six weeks since we launched WAVE 4.0 beta, over 100,000 accessibility reports have been run. We’re now happy to announce the release of the WAVE Firefox toolbar. This toolbar performs web accessibility evaluations directly in your web browser. This provides better security, an ability to evaluate password-protected or intranet pages, and evaluate dynamically created content.

You can download the WAVE Firefox Toolbar at http://wave.webaim.org/toolbar

We have also launched a new WAVE blog and will be posting WAVE updates and information there. You can read more about the WAVE Toolbar or subscribe to the RSS feed now.

After the events of this week, I have several fewer reasons to loathe Internet Explorer.

It’s not a real secret that I, like many other developers, have experienced a vast amount of frustration in attempts to build standards compliant, accessible web sites that work in Internet Explorer. From the infamous hasLayout bug to CSS inconsistencies, I’ve been long waiting for the day that IE would either go away or step up to the standards table.

Then behold, Microsoft announced this week that IE 8 will support the ARIA specification and will no longer require developers to target a specific IE rendering engine (unless of course, they want to target an older rendering engine). Read the CIO.com article, the IE Blog posting, the press release, or the IE8/ARIA Whitepaper.

These announcements signify a significant victory for developers, for standards, and for accessibility. As Bruce Lawson documented, Microsoft’s previous plan to require developers to target specific browsers could have resulted in perpetual inaccessibility on sites that did not opt-in and implement the IE specific meta tag. Now, IE8 will default to the most current rendering engine and will support a true standards compliance mode. Developers will not be required to tell IE to act compliant. As such, screen readers and other assistive technologies can take full advantage of existing and future accessibility specifications (such as ARIA) in Internet Explorer without relying on the page author to trigger standards compliance mode specifically for that browser version.

The ARIA specification has much potential for making dynamic, AJAX-driven, interactive web sites more accessible. Despite it’s potential, developers have not taken it seriously due to the fact that there were no plans for Internet Explorer support. The announcement that IE8 will support ARIA means that developers can begin implementing ARIA very soon. While ARIA is not the panacea of accessibility and won’t solve all problems, it does provide a framework for making rich internet applications more accessible in a formalized, (and now) cross-browser compatible way.

The CSUN Technology and Persons with Disabilities Conference is one of the biggest accessibility conferences of the year. This year, WebAIM is giving three presentations at CSUN. If you’re going to CSUN this year, we hope to see you there. Details below.

Advanced Web Accessibility Evaluation with WAVE

Wednesday, March 12, 2008 - 1:50-2:50 PM
Jared Smith and Aaron Andersen

An overview of the updates to the WAVE accessibility tool and toolbar, and a methodology for evaluating web sites using WAVE and other tools will be presented.

Web Accessibility Gone Wild

Jon Whiting and Jared Smith
Friday, March 14, 2008 - 8:00-9:00 AM

In this presentation, we will discuss how accessibility can decrease if some accessibility techniques are applied incorrectly or excessively.

Accessibility of Next Generation Web Applications

Jared Smith
Friday, March 14, 2008 - 10:40-11:40 AM

Dynamic HTML and AJAX are beginning to dominate the internet. Next generation web applications can impact accessibility of the web for better or worse.

WebAIM is pleased to announce the release of WAVE 4.0. We invite you to test WAVE and provide feedback, recommendations, and bug reports on this beta version at this time.

What is WAVE?

WAVE is a web accessibility evaluation tool. Rather than providing a complex technical report, WAVE shows your original web content with embedded icons and indicators that reveal the accessibility information within your page. WAVE cannot tell you if your web content is accessible - only a human can determine true accessibility - but WAVE can help you evaluate the accessibility of your web content. You can submit web content to WAVE for evaluation by providing a URL, uploading a file, or entering/pasting HTML code.

What’s New in Version 4?

New evaluation rules

WAVE 4.0 beta features 28 new accessibility tests. These provide more detailed checking of accessibility issues and features found in your web content. For instance, instead of simply identifying missing alt text, WAVE 4.0 indicates if the element missing alt text is a decorative image, a link, an image map hotspot, etc. New tests check for empty headings, broken skip navigation links, missing or poor page titles, small text, pop-up windows, hidden content, and much more.

A new evaluation framework

An entirely new evaluation framework makes WAVE more powerful and flexible. Rather than relying on complex tests and if/else statements, a simple, XML-based language is used for writing evaluation rules. This allows easy creation and modification of evaluation rules, icons, and reporting features. Eventually, WAVE may allow user-authoring, editing, or submitting of evaluation rules to allow custom evaluation of web or other content. This framework will allow us to implement future testing under our cognitive disabilities initiative.

Powered by Mozilla

When web content is submitted to WAVE, WAVE uses the Mozilla Gecko rendering engine (this is the rendering engine used in Firefox) to generate a virtual representation (or DOM) of the page. This rendered content, rather than the raw HTML code, is then evaluated against the evaluation rules. This allows WAVE to evaluate elements after cascading style sheets have been applied to them. WAVE can now identify overly small text, for example, even if it is small due to multiple CSS inheritances. It also allows for better evaluation of documents that are not structured or coded to web standards.

Better reporting interface

WAVE 4.0 reporting is simpler and more user-friendly. Tooltips for WAVE icons now provide additional details. Four different report views allow you to evaluate different aspects of your web content. New functionality is available for copy/paste of HTML code and viewing your evaluation history. Additionally, the number of preference options available has decreased. In fact, there really are NO user preferences in WAVE 4.

The interface is also more stable, allowing inline reporting for complex, CSS-driven web site. Despite the improvements, we cannot account for all possible styles and some reports may be rendered with unreadable or layered elements. In such cases, an option is available for disabling CSS styles within reports.

While the interface is javascript driven, all functionality is available with scripting disabled. We implemented the hijax approach which uses scripting to enhance an already-functional interface.

In future versions, more detailed reporting and report customization will be available.

WAVE Toolbar

The WAVE Firefox Toolbar will be available late January 2008. This toolbar will perform all of the WAVE evaluation work directly within your web browser. Because there will be no WAVE server interaction, this will allow for private and secure evaluation of password protected, intranet, dynamically generated, or script modified/AJAX powered web pages.

Beta Resources

During beta testing, a set of test case documents will be available at http://wave.webaim.org/report These provide an excellent way to become familiar with how WAVE works and what its capabilities are. Additionally, the Icons Key can be used to identify new WAVE icons and tests.

WAVE is very much in beta, so if you encounter bugs or have recommendations, please use the feedback form to notify us.

We will be holding an EASI webinar on Monday, January 28th, where we’ll present on the new features of WAVE 4 and what to expect in the future.