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Thread: Re: Testing accessibility
Number of posts in this thread: 11 (In chronological order)
From: Mark
Date: Tue, Aug 05 2008 4:20AM
Subject: Re: Testing accessibility
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I am on vacation from 4th August through 15th August.
If you require an urgent response please contact Martin McKay by
email ( = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = ) or phone (011 44 2894428105).
Yours sincerely,
Mark McCusker
CEO
Texthelp Systems Ltd
From: Paul Collins
Date: Tue, Aug 05 2008 4:30AM
Subject: Testing accessibility
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Hi all,
I'm still using Accessibilidad Web to test my sites, because it's free and
you can scan local versions. Just wondering, has anyone found a better way
of testing their sites of late?!
Accessibilidad web:
http://www.tawdis.net/taw3/cms/en
Cheers
Paul
From: Gareth Dart
Date: Tue, Aug 05 2008 4:40AM
Subject: Re: Testing accessibility
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I always use WAVE (http://wave.webaim.org/) - this seems to be a similar
package to the one you link to below.
To spare us all time, you can insert a standard caveat about the
limitations of automated testing here. On a serious note, though, WAVE
seems to do aboust as much as an automated solution can.
G
Gareth Dart
Web Developer
Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA)
95 Promenade, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire GL50 1HZ
T 01242 211128 F 01242 211122 W www.hesa.ac.uk
From: Paul Collins
Date: Tue, Aug 05 2008 5:10AM
Subject: Re: Testing accessibility
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Thanks Gareth,
Yes, you are right about automated testing, but a mixture of both human and
automated is the best way to approach it.
The benefit of Accessibilidad Web is that you can test local sites. Often
when a site is being developed you don't want it available to the outside
world.
Cheers for the link,
Paul
2008/8/5 Gareth Dart < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
> I always use WAVE (http://wave.webaim.org/) - this seems to be a similar
> package to the one you link to below.
>
> To spare us all time, you can insert a standard caveat about the
> limitations of automated testing here. On a serious note, though, WAVE
> seems to do aboust as much as an automated solution can.
>
> G
>
>
> Gareth Dart
> Web Developer
> Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA)
> 95 Promenade, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire GL50 1HZ
> T 01242 211128 F 01242 211122 W www.hesa.ac.uk
>
>
>
From: Gareth Dart
Date: Tue, Aug 05 2008 5:40AM
Subject: Re: Testing accessibility
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I should probably have mentioned that WAVE offers a firefox toolbar
(http://wave.webaim.org/toolbar) that allows for entirely internal
testing of sites behind a firewall. I have FF2 and the toolbar works
fine - I'm unsure as to support for FF3 as of present but assume it will
be fine there too.
G
Gareth Dart
Web Developer
Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA)
95 Promenade, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire GL50 1HZ
T 01242 211128 F 01242 211122 W www.hesa.ac.uk
From: Shawn Henry
Date: Tue, Aug 05 2008 6:40AM
Subject: Re: Testing accessibility
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> I'm still using Accessibilidad Web to test my sites, because it's free and
> you can scan local versions. Just wondering, has anyone found a better way
> of testing their sites of late?!
Hi Paul,
Here's a database of web accessibility evaluation tools: <http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/tools/>;
There's an option to search for "[ ] Free Software", under "License types".
Note the following companion documents:
* Selecting Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools <http://www.w3.org/WAI/eval/selectingtools>;
* Involving Users in Web Accessibility Evaluation <http://www.w3.org/WAI/eval/users>;
Best,
~Shawn
-----
Shawn Lawton Henry, W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
about: http://www.w3.org/People/Shawn/
phone: +1-617-395-7664
e-mail: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
From: Paul Collins
Date: Tue, Aug 05 2008 7:40AM
Subject: Re: Testing accessibility
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Thanks Gareth, yes I already have the WAVE thingo installed. You can only do
a page at a time of course, but I do still use it along with the
Accessibilidad one.
Shaun, thanks for that link, forgot about that. Would like to get
recommendations also though, instead of trying out loads of different ones
that are not so good! Yes, I am lazy :)
Thanks again for your replies.
2008/8/5 Shawn Henry < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
> > I'm still using Accessibilidad Web to test my sites, because it's free
> and
> > you can scan local versions. Just wondering, has anyone found a better
> way
> > of testing their sites of late?!
>
> Hi Paul,
>
> Here's a database of web accessibility evaluation tools: <
> http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/tools/>;
> There's an option to search for "[ ] Free Software", under "License types".
>
> Note the following companion documents:
> * Selecting Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools <
> http://www.w3.org/WAI/eval/selectingtools>;
> * Involving Users in Web Accessibility Evaluation <
> http://www.w3.org/WAI/eval/users>;
>
> Best,
> ~Shawn
>
>
> -----
> Shawn Lawton Henry, W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
> about: http://www.w3.org/People/Shawn/
> phone: +1-617-395-7664
> e-mail: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
>
From: Peter Krantz
Date: Tue, Aug 05 2008 7:50AM
Subject: Re: Testing accessibility
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On Tue, Aug 5, 2008 at 3:31 PM, Paul Collins < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> Thanks Gareth, yes I already have the WAVE thingo installed. You can only
> do
> a page at a time of course, but I do still use it along with the
> Accessibilidad one.
>
Depending on when in the process you are testing your application I can also
shamelessly promote RAAKT [1]. It is meant to be integrated in the
development process and automated together with other unit testing
frameworks (i.e. it has no pretty human interface and is primarily meant for
developers).
I am using RAAKT to do batch testing of basic accessibility issues as well
[2].
Regards,
Peter
[1]: http://www.peterkrantz.com/raakt/wiki/
[2]:
http://www.peterkrantz.com/simplecrawler/wiki/examples/accessibility-report
From: Cole Robison
Date: Tue, Aug 05 2008 9:30AM
Subject: Re: Testing accessibility
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I can confirm that the WAVE Toolbar works in Firefox 3:
http://wave.webaim.org/blog/updated-toolbar-released/
--
Cole Robison
Director of Statewide Web/IT Accessibility
Division of Information Systems & Communications
State of Kansas
= EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
> From: Gareth Dart < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
> Reply-To: WebAIM Discussion List < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
> Date: Tue, 5 Aug 2008 12:36:45 +0100
> To: WebAIM Discussion List < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
> Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Testing accessibility
>
> I should probably have mentioned that WAVE offers a firefox toolbar
> (http://wave.webaim.org/toolbar) that allows for entirely internal
> testing of sites behind a firewall. I have FF2 and the toolbar works
> fine - I'm unsure as to support for FF3 as of present but assume it will
> be fine there too.
>
> G
>
> Gareth Dart
> Web Developer
> Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA)
> 95 Promenade, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire GL50 1HZ
> T 01242 211128 F 01242 211122 W www.hesa.ac.uk
From: Paul Collins
Date: Wed, Aug 06 2008 3:50AM
Subject: Re: Testing accessibility
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Thanks Peter, I have checked out RAAKT, looks promising, but I don't have a
development testing environment setup currently. I will look into this.
Yes, you are right Cole, I have the Wave toolbar running on Firefox 3 and it
works fine.
Cheers
Paul
2008/8/5 Cole Robison < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
> I can confirm that the WAVE Toolbar works in Firefox 3:
> http://wave.webaim.org/blog/updated-toolbar-released/
>
> --
> Cole Robison
> Director of Statewide Web/IT Accessibility
> Division of Information Systems & Communications
> State of Kansas
> = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
>
>
> > From: Gareth Dart < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
> > Reply-To: WebAIM Discussion List < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
> > Date: Tue, 5 Aug 2008 12:36:45 +0100
> > To: WebAIM Discussion List < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = >
> > Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Testing accessibility
> >
> > I should probably have mentioned that WAVE offers a firefox toolbar
> > (http://wave.webaim.org/toolbar) that allows for entirely internal
> > testing of sites behind a firewall. I have FF2 and the toolbar works
> > fine - I'm unsure as to support for FF3 as of present but assume it will
> > be fine there too.
> >
> > G
> >
> > Gareth Dart
> > Web Developer
> > Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA)
> > 95 Promenade, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire GL50 1HZ
> > T 01242 211128 F 01242 211122 W www.hesa.ac.uk
>
>
>
From: Claudia Alden Case
Date: Mon, Aug 18 2008 10:30AM
Subject: Re: Testing accessibility
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Paul,
I've been using Web Accessibility Toolbar v.2.0 for Internet Explorer.
(Unfortunately it's not available for Firefox.) Here's a link to it:
http://www.paciellogroup.com/resources/wat-ie-about.html
It's very robust, user-friendly tool for testing individual pages. It also
provides meaningful results that are easy to give to a developer and say
"here's what needs to be fixed".
As for an automated tool, I've tried using on online site called CynthiaSays
by HiSoftware: http://www.cynthiasays.com/. I found the results less than
useful because a) it assesses only a single page, not an entire site; b) the
results are a simply pass/fail indicator, with not a lot of information to
help a developer know where the problems are; and c) about half the tests I
still had to run manually using another tool because CynthiaSays just skips
over it.
There's my two cents...
Claudia Alden Case
User Experience Consultant | Alden Case Enterprises, Inc.