Internal USGS Access Only

Tools to Check Accessibility

Unfortunately there is no single tool which can tell you whether your Web Site is accessible (or 508 compliant). A set of tools along with a bit of human judgment are required.

The World Wide Web Consortium maintains a listing of tools for web content accessibility. Alas there is no attempt to evaluate the quality of any of the tools listed, and many of them are not especially useful.

WAI Checklist of Checkpoints for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0, a table that can be printed out.

Accessibility goes beyond Section 508: We have the ability to make our information available through a wide array of technologies and therefore, we should! We need to endeavor to make sure that all of our information is available, whether or not there are federal regulation incentives.
—Mastering a Web Site Instructors

References

• USGS Section 508 Requirements for Web Pages.
• Access Board's accessibility guidelines for Web-based Intranet and Internet Information and Applications. The Access Board is responsible for developing standards for compliance with Section 508. The Board's standards are now part of the Federal procurement regulations.
• The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).
• http://www.section508.gov/ is GSA's Section 508 web resources.
• The Federal IT Accessibility Initiative 508 Awareness project provides a user-friendly introduction to the basics of who and why.
• The Department of Justice Section 508 web site provides the statute itself, and actions completed to date by the federal government.
• Trace Center is a federally supported project to explore accessibility and technology. Among other resources they provide information on Web site design. Another such institute is the National Center for Accessible Media, NCAM.
• WebAIM: Expanding the Web's potential for people with disabilities, and an example section on the Appropriate Use of Alternative Text
• The html 4/CSS1 compliant web browser Opera, has many features specifically for users with disabilities. The screen reader JAWS will read web pages aloud.
• Microsoft has an Accessibility Resources page, which for a time had numerous occurrences of the phrase "[image]", as if they took the literal output of a text-only Web browser without making any attempt to make the page more readable.
• Adobe also has accessibility resources. Adobe has been striving to increase the accessibility of its PDF format and viewers.
• And finally, a detailed, thoughtful, sometimes opinionated set of Guidelines on Diversity Compliance in Web Design, by Tom Christiansen.

12 MB Movie demonstrating the use of a screen reader., you may need a QuickTime plug-in.

Lab Exercise on Accessibility

slide 39

"Mastering a Web Site" online course Created and maintained by Lorna Schmid and David Boldt. http://water.usgs.gov/usgs/training/webmaster/accessible_tools.html     Last modified: Tue Dec 1 10:05:17 EST 2009