Testing Accessibility - What do you use to test accessibility (if anything).? Where I used to work, they used to use watchfire's bobby,

WelshStew

What do you use to test accessibility (if anything).?

Where I used to work, they used to use watchfire's bobby, and once it met the testing criteria they were happy (that was until I played back the website to them through JAW's)

There are a number of tools out there to help you test automatically; do you use any of them?

Which one have you found to be the best?

The reason for asking is that I have to come up with a set of criteria and measures for our website, one of which will be accessibility. Obviously, this has to be explained and taken with a pinch of salt - I mean the guidelines are around 7 years old now, and as such many actually hinder accessibility.

I don;t want this to be an onerous task, and automating most of it will help, I just need the right/best tool.

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WelshStew
follow me on twitter here | WelshStew - Web Design & Web Development | Motorhome hire uk

Gaz

i use my knowledge, and thus i do most of my testing, using various browsers and changing settings to change how i view the website.

i've tried a few tools in the past, and never found them any good.

Mike Hopley

I do recommend actually using a screen reader, at least once in a while. Getting experience of how these things actually work is enlightening. I used to use Fangs for Firefox, but it never got updated to work with newer versions. A quick search for something new reveals this: Fire Vox.

I would use JAWS, but I can't justify the cost. Perhaps one day I'll find a not-quite-legal version. ;) It's great that you have access to JAWS. :)

Automatic tests are of limited use. You can't use an algorithm to determine how accessible a site is. However, provided you treat the results circumspectly (i.e. don't just blindly implement every suggestion), they can help you find a few issues you may have missed.

Check dependencies by turning off javascript, images, and CSS. Try different combinations, as sometimes they interact strangely (images on, CSS off is a good one for screwing up so-called "accessible" image-replacement methods).

Read the WCAG, but again be circumspect. Most of their advice is good, but some recommendations actually harm accessibility (for example, access keys are a Bad Idea, as they interfere with browser keyboard commands). So in order to reach AAA compliance, you have to implement at least one detrimental suggestion. ;)

WelshStew

Thanks for the suggesstions guys,

JAW's is a nice tool, but I find it boring; I guess the monotony of the tone of voice just puts me to sleep... However, as you mention, it is good as a once every 6 months test to ensure it is all working as it should.

I guess what I am looking for is a way to measure a sub set of the WCAG guidelines (the ones we want to adopt), and then provide statistics to my manager / the wider audience on how we are doing.

If you are testing manually, then it is always a finger in the air guess - "yeah, about 60% done me old china"

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WelshStew
follow me on twitter here | WelshStew - Web Design & Web Development | Motorhome hire uk

Mike Hopley

You could take the output of Bobby (say), and count the number of checkpoints passed out of the total number that you wish to adopt. That would give a crude-but-objective measure.

I suppose you'd rather automate this, but I don't know of any accessibility tools with configurable scoring (as Yslow 2.0 allows for its grading system).

Wrams

Hi Stew, Is that software called JAWS Desktop Suite version whatever the version is now. ??

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CloudedVision

I use the same method to test accessibility as I use for SEO: The Ultimate 5-Minute Guide to SEO | Blog | Theron Luhn | Web Design and Development

Simple but effective It's not automated or anything, but I find automated tools really can't measure the sites accessibility. (Of course, I haven't really used as high-level accessibility testings such as JAWS before, so I can't comment on those I suppose)

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Panthr - Web Design and Development

Wrams

Stew. Do you find that JAWS is buggy..? I installed it in trial mode and it changed my font/keyboard layout broswers would NOT start even after reboot. Done scans thinking it was malware or spyware even a virus and nothing. So I had the FULL copy next and after rebooting it was still the same. In the end I had to do a "partial system restore" to get my PC back.

My PC is running fine now. The thing is that the trial mode was from the offiicial website. I can understand that if it wasn't there may have been some hidden virus,worm or whatever but from the main website...? Strange!!

Personally for what you pay for it I think it is rubbish. Maybe because I wasn't sure how to use it but also the problems with it. Have you ever had issues...?

Did you get the version that costs a couple hundred quid...? Version 10.0.1..?

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