Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools

FAE Report Option: Evaluate Dynamically Generated Web Pages

The combination of the Firefox accessibility extension and Functional Web Accessibility Evaluator (FAE) provides a powerful new feature for testing the accessibility of dyanmically generated web pages. Most current web accessibility evaluations tools only tests the code downloaded from the server and does not test the changes in the html due to scripting executed by the browser and most evaluation tools cannot test web pages that are protected by passwords. The use of the Firefox Accessibility Extension takes a snapshot of the current Document Object Model that is used by scripting technologies to generate and change content on web pages. The snapshot is sent to the FAE for accessibility analysis. In the future we will be adding features to create summary reports from collections of page level reports.

Two ways to generate FAE report

• Select the "FAE Report" from the Accessibility menu and the Tools option (NOTE: Accessibility Menu option must be enabled)
• Select the "FAE Report" option form the "Tools" pull down menu on the tool bar

FAE Configuration Options for Frames

FAE has many page level tests including proper titling and headers structure. If frames are used to layout content in a web resources FAE needs to know whether all the frames should be considered as a unified page or each page should be considered separately. Many web applications use frames to isolate content for making it easy to update regions on the graphical rendering, but to the user the rendering looks like a unified page. In this case the user should select the "All visibile framed content found should be analyzed as one documents". If the content of the frames is made up of static hml coding and anyone of the frames pages viewed indpendently and still make sense, then the frame documents should probably be analyzed as separate documents. This is a work in progress and the development team would like your feedback and comments on this feature.

All visibile framed content found should be analyzed as separate documents

Frames that are used to layout static web pages with the frame controls visible in the graphical rendering and the resources within the frame set would make sense out context with the other frames then the documents within the frame set could be analyzed as separate documents in terms of the FAE rules.

All visibile framed content found should be analyzed as one documents

Many dynamically generated web pages use frames to graphically layout information and provide a means to update parts of the web page. The user is typically not aware of the use of frames and the page graphically presents itself as a unified page. In this case the user would want to treat all the frames as a single page. Screen readers also will treat the content in frames as a single page in terms of navigation of content. Since

Include iframe content as part of its associated document

If users want to include iframe content as part of the FAE analysis then this option should be selected.

Two ways to get to FAE configuration dialog box

• Select the "FAE Configuration" from the Accessibility menu and the Tools option (NOTE: Accessibility Menu option must be enabled)
• Select the "FAE Configuration" option form the "Tools" pull down menu on the tool bar

Differneces between FAE Report from Firefox Extension and FAE Website

• Currently the Firefox Accessibility Extension "FAE Report" function does not send the images associated with the web resource to FAE for dimension analysis, and therefore the FAE Styling Report always lists images used for styling as a warning. Part of the warning message states the images could not be retreived for testing. We plan on correct this problem in a future release of the Extension.

Links to Other Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools

Illinois Functional Web Accessibility Evaluator

A service of the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign to test web pages for functional accessibility features based on the DRES/CITES Web Accessibility Practices to implement Section 508 and W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Create a user account and you will be able to test web sites to two levels of links.

WebAIM Wave

Web accessibility evaluation and visualization tool for W3C WCAG 1.0 and Section 508 requirements.

Cynthia Says

The HiSoftware Cynthia Says is a web content accessibility validation solution, it is designed to identify errors in your content related to Section 508 standards and/or the W3C WCAG guidelines.

WebXact

A web page evaluation tool that includes information on accessibility and is based on the orginal Bobby testing tool.

TAW

TAW (Web Accessibility Test) is a tool for the analysis of Web sites, based on the W3C - Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 (WCAG 1.0).