10 Online Website Accessibility Tools that You Cannot Ignore

Featured article by Asad Ali, Independent Technology Author

Online Accessibility Tests are among the most care-free means to evaluate your website anytime through the internet. The reason why these tools are popular among the ecommerce community is because website accessibility is closely interlinked with site usability. If a website fails to produce optimum results in website accessibility test, then it will directly affect the conversions the store gets. In short, Accessibility and Usability go hand in hand. Finding the right tools to evaluate your website against accepted guidelines is not all too easy.  You must have a tool that can test your web pages against standards such as W3C’s WCAG 1.0 and 2.0, Section 508, the Stanca Act, BITV, RGAA or their combinations. It should also be easy to use and accept URLs or HTML file uploads. It should also be online and free and so users don’t have to get into the hassle of downloading them or updating their versions. Keeping these factors in mind, we have coined a list of 10 most popular and result oriented Website Accessibility Evaluation tools for you to try.

FAE

The FAE or Functional Accessibility Evaluator uses section 508 guidelines and WCAG 1.0 standards to assess and evaluate your website content for its accessibility on search engines. These two guidelines are integrated in its ITAA Web Accessibility Standards to break down results into 5 distinctive categories namely Navigation and Orientation, Scripting, Text Equivalents, HTML and Styling Standards. These results are quantified through a percentage that is divided into three fallouts, Pass, Warn and Fail. This allows you to focus on the specific areas of your web page content so you may make changes more accurately.

Web Accessibility Checker

Web Accessibility Checker works by analyzing web pages one by one for assessing their accessibility through WCAG 1.0 and 2.0, Section 508, BITV and the Stanca Act. It was developed by (SOAP) Stanford’s Online Accessibility Program. This application runs with one of the best violation catching mechanism that highlights the problems through its report produced at the end of the evaluation. The guidelines can be custom picked by the user to check it against specific standards.

Accessibility Valet

The first tool on our list is Accessibility Valet. This application makes it easy for web marketers to check their web page content through section 508 of if it meets the W3C standards set by Google. The paid subscription allows you to check unlimited links while the free version is restricted to one URL at a time. It shows every HTML reporting feature which indicate your markup in a normalized form while highlighting the valid and bogus markup. It also helps you point out the misplaced elements and generates a report for any accessibility warnings.

AChecker

AChecker is another remarkable Accessibility evaluation tool developed in 2009 by IDRC (Inclusive Design Research Centre) of Toronto. This tool allows you to produce a web page through its URL or by simply uploading the HTML file. Then you can choose which guidelines should be used to check it for accessibility such as, BITV, Section 508, HTML Validator Stanca Act, WCAG 1.0 and WCAG 2.0. It’s a highly recommended tool that gives user-friendly experience and improving the insight of marketers about latest trends and regarding specific pages.

EvalAccess

EvalAccess is among the few applications that allows you to span and check your full website for WCAG 1.0 compliance standards. Developed in the University of Basque Country in Spain, EvalAccess shows the results in an all to easy to read and understand report while highlighting every error detected in the process. Although it might not come as the most user-friendly tool, it is more than enough to help designers and developers in cleaning up and optimizing their websites.

MAGENTA

Another tool that has helped many web marketers to test and declare their web page accessibility is MAGENTA. Like other applications it is an online accessibility tool patented by Human Interface in Information Systems Laboratory. Aside from WCAG 1.0 standards, it tests the accessibility of the web pages in accordance with the Stanca Act guidelines plus the guidelines for the visually impaired.

Cynthia Says

Cynthia Says is one of the most reliable website accessibility solutions available online. It is fast and easy to use and can identify errors based on section 508 and WCAG compliance standards regarding your content. Since it’s a free online tool that helps you validate your web content, it can only manage one page at a time. You can use it for getting your web pages upto mark and enhancing your web content strategies.

WAVE

Developed by WebAIM, WAVE is an application that is also available for both desktop and Firefox extension. It helps notify violations by showing its results through an image generated from the evaluation results. Just like TAW, WAVE also provides with valuable suggestions to fix the problems. Instead of showing a complicated and technical report, this tool displays the original Web Page along with the embedded icons and indicators that show accessibility details present in your web pages.

OCAWA

OCAWA is short for Operational Control and Analysis for Web Accessibility which comes fortified with WCAG 1.0 guidelines and RGAA, France’s accessibility law. Developed by Urbilog and Orange, this application gives users the fastest means to get their website content checked by adding the URL or uploading the HTML file. The tool will run the details and point out the any discovered violation in its accessibility audit report. It is easy to use and does not require any prior technical knowledge.

TAW

Developed by CTIC Centro Tecnólogico, TAW makes it extremely easy for the user to indicate any irregularities or violations on its site pages. It uses WCAG 1.0, 2.0 as well as its own set of rules to skim web pages and mark results with warnings and fails and how to fix them. The best thing about this TAW is that it also provides recommendations how it can be solved without any charges. Its free and available for desktops and as Firefox plugin.

Author Bio:

Asad Ali is an Internet marketing expert with an extensive experience of 7 years in design optimization, & conversion optimization. He is currently working at GO-Gulf web development company offering its services in multiple spectrums.