Step 3 - Get that HTML accessible
Once you have created proper HTML within your page see (previous step 2), many of your accessibility issues will be gone, because proper HTML requires many accessibility techniques, such as alt text and summaries. The next step is to find other accessibility issues that may be present in your page. This is where automated accessibility tools come into play. It is noteworthy that aotomated accessible tools do not check all areas of a sites accessibility. There are many manual areas that will require your approval.
Below are some excellent tools we have used in making sites accessible:
The Wave accessibility tool is a great place to start - http://www.wave.webaim.org/. The Wave provides useful information about accessibility features and errors within your page. It is designed to facilitate the design process by adding icons to a version of your page. The icons represent structural, content, usability, or accessibility feature or problems within your content. You can easily see the exact location within your page where an error is present.
The Wave (or any other software-based validator) cannot check all accessibility issues, but it checks nearly everything that can possibly be checked in an automated process. As soon as you have fixed the errors and applicable warnings from the Wave, you may want to validate your page using other accessibility validators in the links above. This ensures nothing has been missed in the automating process.
If you need to validate or audit the accessibility of an entire site, there are many evaluation tools you can use, including HiSoftware's line of products (http://www.hisoftware.com/) or InFocus (http://www.ssbtechnologies.com/).
You have now completed some of the main challenges with the process of making accessible web sites. The next stage we will look at is Testing in a screen reader. This will enable you to get an idea of what it is really like to face your site from a visitors view point.
Want to know what its like for the user of your site? Then go to page 4
Report Page - 1- 2- 3- 4- 5- 6
To determine how accessible your website is, please contact us. For further details on making your website accessible, visit the Disability Rights Commission or read our free accessible report on web sites.
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