UNIT 5 > MODULE 4

Lesson 3: Validating Your Accessibility

Overview

In this lesson, you will have an opportunity to experiment with three free web accessibility assessment tools. These tools provide you with feedback about the accessibility of your web pages. Unlike HTML and CSS, accessibility is somewhat subjective. Some accessibility issues can be automatically detected, such as whether there are "alt" attributes on graphics. However, some accessibility issues can't be automatically detected and require human judgement. The web accessibility tools will list accessibility problems that were automatically detected, and for those items that it couldn't detect automatically it will guide you through the process of evaluating these potential problems manually.

Learner Outcomes

At the completion of this exercise, you will have:

• learned about available tools for checking the accessibility of web pages
• gain practice using these tools to evaluating web pages for accessibility

Activities

1. As a class, your instructor will guide you through a review of several websites using two or more of the free web accessibility assessment tools. A list of free tools is provided below in the Resources section. Which of these free tools do you like best? Why? What's good about them? How could they be improved?
2. Now, assess the accessibility of your school's website using whichever of the tools below you like best. If the tool discovers accessibility problems, consider how you would correct them. Write a brief report on the Unit 5 page of your portfolio site.

Resources/Online Documents

• WAVE (Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool)
• Functional Accessibility Evaluator
• Cynthia Says
• University of Washington Accessible Information Technology: Tools and Resources (see especially the section on "Browser Toolbars, Add-ons, and Extensions")

All done?

Turn your web page in to your instructor, so they can confirm that it's accessible.

Copyright © 2005-2008 by University of Washington. Permission is granted to use these materials in whole or in part for educational, noncommercial purposes provided the source is acknowledged. This product was created with support from the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research of the U.S. Department of Education (grant #H133D010306), and is maintained with support from the National Science Foundation (grant #CNS-054061S). The contents do not necessarily represent the policies of the U.S. federal government, and you should not assume their endorsement.