Web Accessibility Test Tools
Originally posted August 5, 2008
The Web Accessibility Toolbar can help you test your web pages for accessibility.
- Web Developer extention for Firefox
- Web Accessibility Toolbar for IE
After downloading and installing the Web Accessibility Toolbar, you will
see the menu options.
- WAT – Update function and documentation
- Check – Quick check tools
- Resize – Convenient browser window resize tools
- CSS – Options to disable or enable parts of CSS
- Images – Options to explore alternative text information for images
- Colour – Options to test page color contrast
- Structure – Tools to analyze page structure
- Tables – Tools to analyze table structure
- Frames – Tools to analyze frame structure
- Doc Info – Information about page
- Source – Tools to view source
- IE – Tools for IE accessibility standards
- Log – Open a log for note taking
- FireFox – Open this window in FireFox
- Opera – Open this window in Opera
IBM Research has tools available to check your web site for accessibility. The accessibilityWorks tool works dynamically with the browser to check and correct the web page without human intervention.
It is not clear how these tools work with dynamically generated pages or how these tools can auto-correct alternative text for images. Web 2.0 remains a challenge for these tools as well. Web 2.0 tools should provide a means for page authors to add alternative information where appropriate.