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Re: What we found when we tested tools on the world's least-accessible webpage

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From: Moore,Michael (Accessibility) (HHSC)
Date: Feb 24, 2017 3:03PM

I agree with that assessment. Some things like empty data cells in a table that they suggested was an error, I would have a hard time teaching our developers to interpret the results if things like that were flagged. You will also be happy to know that our current process for our developers starts with the WAVE tool in Chrome and has resulted in a dramatic drop in accessibility bugs found at QA time.

Mike Moore
EIR (Electronic Information Resources) Accessibility Coordinator
Texas Health and Human Services Commission
Civil Rights Office
(512) 438-3431 (Office)



Making electronic information and services accessible to people with disabilities is everyone's job. I am here to help.

-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Jared Smith
Sent: Friday, February 24, 2017 3:23 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] What we found when we tested tools on the world's least-accessible webpage

Thanks for sharing this. Their premise that automated tools are limited is spot on. Their methodology for reviewing the tools, however, is rather questionable. Many of the "barriers" that they identified have no or negligible end user impact. They seem to suggest that if a tool does not indicate an "error" for every possible interpretation of some accessibility issue or guideline, that somehow that tool is flawed.

Our approach with WAVE is to facilitate human evaluation and focus the evaluator on things that actually have an impact - not sending them on a wild goose chase fixing "errors" that don't have any impact on actual end user accessibility. This study would suggest that the tool that flags the most "errors" is somehow best.

They also made significant errors in their analysis of WAVE. I found at least 8 items that WAVE readily flags that they somehow overlooked or recorded incorrectly. I've notified them of these errors -
https://github.com/alphagov/accessibility-tool-audit/issues/3 - and hope they update their results accordingly.

Jared Smith
WebAIM.org