Evaluating Web Accessibility Overview

Introduction

When developing or redesigning a website or web application, evaluate accessibility early and throughout the development process to identify accessibility problems early, when it is easier to address them.

There are evaluation tools that help with evaluation. However, no tool alone can determine if a site meets accessibility standards. Knowledgeable human evaluation is required to determine if a site is accessible.

Initial Checks

Even if you don’t know anything about accessibility and you don’t have a robust accessibility tool, you can check some aspects of accessibility.

Easy Checks — A First Review of Web Accessibility

Provides step-by-step guidance and brief explanations for checking some aspects of accessibility.

Tools

Web accessibility evaluation tools are software programs or online services that help determine if web content meets accessibility standards.

Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools List

Includes information on more than 100 tools. You can use the filters to narrow down the list to the types of tools you are interested in.

Selecting Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools

Provides guidance on choosing tools. It describes the features and functionality of different types of evaluation tools, and discusses things to consider for your situation.

Conformance Evaluation and Reports

Conformance evaluation determines how well web pages or applications meet accessibility standards. W3C’s Website Accessibility Conformance Evaluation Methodology (WCAG-EM) is an approach for determining conformance to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).

WCAG-EM Overview: Website Accessibility Conformance Evaluation Methodology

A short page with basic information to get you started. We suggest you read it before going to the full WCAG-EM document.

WCAG-EM Report Tool: Website Accessibility Evaluation Report Generator

Helps you generate evaluation reports according to WCAG-EM. It does not do the checking for you. It helps you follow the steps of WCAG-EM and it generates a report from the input you provide.

Template for Web Accessibility Evaluation Reports

Suggests information to include in a report.

ATAG Report Tool

Helps you generate a report on how a tool meets Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG). Authoring tools are software and services used to create web content – such as content management systems (CMS) and what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) HTML editors.

Communicate the results of evaluation clearly, including the scope of the evaluation.

People

Getting the right people and skills involved makes your accessibility evaluations more effective.

Involving Users in Evaluating Web Accessibility

Provides guidance on including people with disabilities (“users”) in evaluation throughout project development.

Using Combined Expertise to Evaluate Web Accessibility

Discusses skill sets and considerations for collaborative review.

For Developers of Evaluation Tools and Methodologies

WCAG 2 Test Rules describe how to test conformance to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) success criteria. They are primarily for developers of evaluation tools and methodologies.

Specifications for expressing test results (EARL) and for writing accessibility test rules (Accessibility Conformance Testing (ACT) Rules Format) are introduced in Evaluation Standards Overview.