Using Deque Ramp Ascend
The Remediation Process

Remediation Prompts

Once Ramp Ascend has completed the evaluation, you will notice a red "X" for files in the Site Explorer Panel that have violations. Moving to one of these files in the Site Explorer reveals its violations in the Violation Panel. You can navigate through the violations and fix them. Certain types of violations can be auto-fixed by Deque Ramp Ascend and the remaining can be fixed through its wizard interface. Only the latter need your attention. Please remember that the selections made in the Remediation Tab of the Accessibility Options take effect during this process.

You could also begin by reviewing the Violations - Where Found report which summarizes the violations across the site and identifies the ones that Ramp Ascend can auto-fix. These are violations for which Ramp Ascend does not need any user input to make the repair. By default, when the auto-fix button is activated for any violation in a page, the auto-repair is performed for all violations that can be auto-fixed for that web page. Therefore, it is a good idea to activate the auto-fix button only after all other violations that need to be fixed through the dialog-based process have been corrected.

Depending on the violation, Ramp Ascend displays a dialog box and uses this input to generate accessible HTML code. Below are examples for assigning alt text/longdesc for an image and label/title text for a form control. It is important to note that the Undo button lets you undo changes only to the last violation that was fixed. At any time, during your remediation effort, you can perform a functional override of a violation/warning by selecting the Approve button if a functional test or internal standard has established that the content is accessible.

Once all the violations for a file are fixed, the red mark against the file in the Site Explorer Panel changes to a green check mark. A blue plus mark against the file means it has interactive questions that need answering although no violations are reported in the Violations Panel.

Comparing modified and unmodified content

From within Deque Ramp Ascend you can compare the appearance of the web content before and after making changes for accessibility. To view the difference, go to the Preview Option under the View Menu and choose the modified view or the original view as you wish. You can do this after every violation and then decide to accept or undo the change. Please note that for several accessibility related fixes, the difference between original and modified view in the browser is not apparent. If you decide to undo the change for that violation, you can go back to the violations panel in Ramp and do so.

Retrieving remediated content

Once you are done with the remediation, you can export the modified content to a separate folder on your local system. To do this go to the file menu and select the Export site or Export File option. If focus in the Site Explorer panel is on a particular file within the site, the latter menu item is enabled. If the focus is at the site level, Export Site can be activated.

Remediation options

The Remediation Tab under Accessibility Options permits you to customize the remediation process through a set of checkbox options:

• Run auto-fix at site level: Checking this box will in one stroke correct all violations that can be auto-fixed for every file analyzed in the site. One needs to be very careful while using this option as this process cannot be undone.
• Approve same violations in a file: Checking this box tells Deque Ramp Ascend that once a particular type of violation is approved in a file, all occurrences of that violation should be automatically approved across the file.
• Approve same violations in a site: Checking this box tells Deque Ramp Ascend that once a particular type of violation is approved, all occurrences of that violation should be automatically approved across the site. This option should be used with caution as the process cannot be reversed.
• Apply interactive answer across site: Checking this box tells Deque Ramp Ascend that once a particular type of interactive question has been answered, the same answer choice should be automatically applied to all occurrences of that interactive question across the site. This option should be used with caution.

The above options are followed by another set of checkboxes that are relevant for correcting violations against specific Section 508 paragraphs or WCAG checkpoints. The compliance level selected determines the checkboxes that are presented here. These choices are necessary because there might be more than one way of correcting a particular violation. For example, you need to indicate if you wish to make skip-navigation links on web pages either visible or invisible. You also need to say whether you wish to use the longdesc attribute or the D-link method when you need to link to detailed descriptions for certain images.