9 Free Online Accessibility Tools
Rick Henkin
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There are several free online accessibility tools that you can use to evaluate your web pages. These automated programs attempt to compare your webpages to the guidelines set forth by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

According to it's website, "The W3C is an international consortium where Member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop Web standards. W3C's mission is: To lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing protocols and guidelines that ensure long-term growth for the Web."

While none of these automated tools can compare your webpage with all of the guidelines set by the W3C, and they lack the component of human judgment,, they do provide a good starting point to see how you're doing.

Remember, that people with impairments represent a significant portion of web users and they have discretionary income to spend. According to this report by Mary Francis Theotanos and Janice Redish, in 2003, there were almost 22 million Americans with disabilities online. Statistics showed that they spend more time each week online than non-disabled users. And according to the 1997 President's Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities, their discretionary income was $175 billion.

Not only is it morally wrong to ignore them, it just doesn't make good business sense.



9 Free Online Accessibility Tools


  1. Web Accessibility Inspector  Examines the accessibility of a website and points out any important problem that affects mainly the elderly and visually disabled people. It's a desktop application.


  2. Vischeck.com  Shows you what a web page or image looks like to someone who is color blind. It simulates 3 kinds of color blindness. It's an online application or you can download a program to run on your PC.


  3. Accessibility Color Wheel  Compares font and background color pairs for accessibility for 3 types of color blindness.


  4. TAW Web Accessibility Test  A web based application that evaluates your site's accessibility based on the WCAG 1.0. You can also download an expanded version of the software for free.


  5. AIS Web Accessibility Toolbar  A free extension for Internet Explorer (version 5 and above). Provides  a variety of options for accessibility evaluation of web pages.


  6. Firefox Accessibility Extension 1.4.5  Supports people with disabilities and web developers in navigating, styling and accessing text equivalents that are useful to people with disabilities.


  7. Cynthia Says  Puts accessibility compliant code within the reach of all users, even those with little or no knowledge of Web design.


  8. Torquemada  A tool for page checking that makes it possible to quickly identify which parts of a page are in error and HTML code corresponding to these parts.


  9. WAVE 4.0 Beta  WAVE shows the original web page with embedded icons and indicators that reveal the accessibility information within your page.



ARTICLE DATE: 2008-10-29
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