May 30
Web Accessibility Basics : Lesson 4: Checking your site and staying accessible.
In our final lesson on web accessibility basics, we’ll discuss how to test your site, and what to do to ensure you continue on a path of accessibility as your web site grows and develops. This article will be a little shorter than the others as we’ll direct you towards resources you can use to ensure your compliance to the WCAG.
Once you’ve completed the design of your new site, or updated your current site, then it is time to test your site against the standards. By far, the most widely used solution is the WebXact solution by Watchfire. This is a free tool that allows you to check a single page, and I use this frequently to test a page as a design moves forward. For long term projects, utilizing the commercial version called Bobby is your best bet.
You should also test your page by going through some specific browser based tests as described through a preliminary accessibility review of your web site.
As you move forward, the key is to continue using these preliminary and software based tools for each and every new page created. As you get more experienced with accessibility, then you’ll find that a common workflow will take place and accessibility will become second nature to you and your team.
November 25th, 2007 at 1:22 pm
[…] While these are just the basics and there are more items needed to optimize accessibility of your page, by following this structure your web site will be well on the path to conforming to the WAI. You can test the accessibility of your web site here. In our next article we’ll show you how to keep your web site accessible. […]