Much
of the material in this website is copyrighted by the W3C
and UsableNet. We wish to thank them
for its
use and have provided appropriate links to the original material.
Evaluation
tools - Perform a static analysis of pages or sites regarding their accessibility,
and return a report or a rating.
Repair
tools - Once the accessibility issues with a Web page or site have been
identified, these tools can assist the author in making the pages more accessible.
Filter
and transform tools - These tools assist Web users rather than authors
to either modify a page or supplement an assistive technology or browser.
Perform a static analysis
of pages or sites regarding their accessibility, and return a report or a rating.
Validation tools that check HTML and CSS without an accessibility focus are
included since validating to a published grammar is one step towards accessibility.
"AccVerify™ implements
programmatic verification and reports all errors/non-compliance with the standards,
plus checklist for criteria that can't be verified programmatically. Verifies
the "all else fails" text version. Differentiates between 508 and W3C standards
Tools relevant for accessibility
include viewing in various screen sizes, view with images are replaced by
ALT text. Also HTML and link validation, search engine tools, and other browser
compatibility tests.
Developed by CAST, Bobby
helps authors determine if their sites are accessible. It does this through
automatic checks as well as manual checks. It also analyzes Web pages for
compatibility with various browsers. You may either download Bobby and run
it locally, or use it through a Web interface on CAST's site. The downloadable
version is written in Java and takes advantage of the accessibility support
in Java. (1999)
Created by Thomas Tongue
and Imagiware, Inc. (1997). performs minimal accessibility checking ("alt"
on IMG) but it also verifies links, spell checks and performs some syntax
checking. Licenses may be purchased to run the software on a local intranet.
An e-mail address is available for feedback.
Dr. Watson is hosted
as a free service by Addy & Associates (2000). Watson checks per HTML
3.2, as well as Netscape and Microsoft extensions up through version 4.x.
Watson can also check many other aspects of your site, including link validity,
download speed, search engine compatibility, link popularity, word count,
and spelling. No specific accessibility checking. It only runs on the Addy
& Associates server.
SSB Technologies. Interactive
evaluation tool designed to help developers create accessible web pages. Also
see InFocus (a repair tool). Runs on both the desktop and a server. Runs on
Windows 95/98/00/NT, Linux, Unix, and Mac OS. The server software available
for installation on local intranets. Support and upgrades are available to
users of the software This software claims to be designed so that it is accessible
to all users.
Lift Online and Lift
Site are both Developed by UsableNet, Inc. (Last update: 24 April 2001 LRK)
LIFT
Onsite is software that allows web designers and web owners to test
and repair accessibility and usability issues, including site navigability,
download speed, graphic quality, accessibility, searchability, etc. It
integrates with web editors such as Dreamweaver, GoLive, FrontPage, BB
Edit. .It runs locally on MacOS.
LIFT
Online is the evaluation portion of LIFT Onsite. It is a subscription
based service.
508
Accessibility Suite a free extension for Dreamweaver 4 and UltraDev
4, developed by UsableNet with input from Macromedia.
This is a set of four
tools used to test the usability and accessibility of a site. It is suggested
that you register to receive bug reports and update information. An e-mail
address is provided for feedback and questions. (1999)
WebSAT - The Web
Static Analyzer Tool uses a subset of usability guidelines to analyze
a page for accessibility, form use, performance, maintainability, navigation,
and readability. As with Bobby, they have automated as many of the checks
as possible with many checks requiring subjective decisions by the author.
It may also be run through their Web interface or downloaded and run locally
on Unix or Windows 95/NT machines. As such, it may be run on a local intranet.
WebCAT - The Web
Category Analysis Tool is a variation upon traditional card sorting techniques.
It allows a web designer/usability engineer to test a proposed or existing
categorization scheme of a web site to determine how well the categories
and items are understood by users. It must be run on a local Web server
(on a Unix, Solaris, or Win 95/NT system).
WebVIP - The Web
Visual Instrumenter Program is a tool that can be used to conduct traditional
user testing on a given set of tasks but in a rapid, remote and automated
fashion. WebVIP allows the usability engineer to quickly instrument a
web site for user testing. Instrumentation is accomplished through the
use of visual programming and automated techniques. It must run on a local
Windows 95/NT or Unix Solaris 2 server.
WebVISVIP - The WebVIP
Visualization Tool is used to visualize the path data generated by VIP
in 3D graphics. It must run on a local Windows 95/NT or Unix Solaris 2
server.
Online toolkit and automated
website monitoring service, including an HTML Validator, Link Checker, toolkit
for testing and debugging forms and scripts, SGML tools for content analysis
and transformation, an online version of Tidy, and a website monitoring service
to notify users of potential problems.
An XML Structure Validation
Language using Patterns in Trees - WAI Content Guidelines. Compares the pattern
of a file to the patterns defined by WCAG schema.
A tool that helps people
perform those tasks that require human judgment (e.g. "Does this ALT text
a functional equivalent for this image?" "Does this reading order make sense?").
The Wave displays the ALT text of images and AREAS on the page for comparison
with the images, provides numbered arrows to show the linearized reading order,
and shows the HTML equivalent (if any) provided for applets. The Wave
performs automatic checks (detects missing or suspicious ALT text). However,
at this time it is far from covering all accessibility checkpoints.(2/25/2000).
From the W3C. It is a
programmable robot that can report missing "alt" attributes or other specific
anomalies. Its primary design goal was to test HTTP/1.1 pipelining features.
It runs locally on Unix or Windows. Users may subscribe to the discussion
forum to find examples or discuss issues. (1999)
From the Web Design Group
(WDG). It uses the same engine as the W3C HTML Validator (David Clark's nsgmls)
but produces easier to understand error messages. It also supports a wider
variety of character encodings than the W3C validator. It is available online
or can run locally (supposedly, although information for running it locally
was not available on 18 February 2000). You can also run a batch of pages
through it. (1999)
By Neil Bowers (1997).
It is a syntax and minimal style checker for HTML: a Perl script which picks
fluff off html pages, much in the same way traditional lint picks fluff off
C programs. It is available for download on Unix, Windows NT, Mac or OS/2.
Over 20 sites support a Web-based interface in a variety of languages. E-mail
and a feedback form are available.
Created by the Public
Service Commission of Canada. It is a 27 question, multiple choice survey
available in English or French that produces 5 accessibility ratings
highly inaccessible,
much improvement
required,
partially accessible,
fairly accessible,
accessible.
An e-mail address is
provided to give feedback. There are two versions of the test, one written
in HTML 2.0 that requires the user to tally their rating. The other uses
JavaScript to tally the rating.
(1998) From the The UK
Office for Library and Information Networking (UKOLN). It has been developed
to assist in the monitoring and analysis of trends of use of Web technologies
across various communities. It is a PERL script that runs on Unix platforms.
Feedback may be sent to the authors via e-mail. This has been superceded by
Harvest-NG (1999). We are waiting for more information about this project.
Validates the CSS used
in documents. You may run it through the interface on the W3C server or download
it and run it at a Java command line. Since it is Java it runs wherever there
is a Java Virtual Machine. There is a mailing list for questions. (1998)
It is "an easy-to-use
HTML validation service based on an SGML parser. It checks HTML documents
for compliance with W3C HTML Recommendations and other HTML standards." The
service is available through the W3C Web site, although the source code is
available for mirroring on other sites. It is known to run on Unix platforms
but may work on others (it has not been tested). A discussion list is available.
(2000)
SSB Technologies. Interactive
repair tool designed to help developers create accessible web pages. Also
see InSight (an evaluation tool). Runs on both the desktop and a server. Runs
on Windows 95/98/00/NT, Linux, Unix, and Mac OS. The server software available
for installation on local intranets. Support and upgrades are available to
users of the software This software claims to be designed so that it is accessible
to all users.
From Division of Rehabilitation
- Education Services, University of Illinois. "Accessibility Wizard simplifies
the task of converting PowerPoint presentations to text pure HTML ... and
automates much of the conversion of Power Point Presentations to an HTML format
that includes required accessibility information." (LRK 4/20/2001).
By Dave Raggett. Repairs
errors, improves style in HTML/XML. Converts HTML to XHTML. Removes
proprietary XML tags from HTML output. An online version is available
at Site Valet (not all tidy options are
available in this version however).
From Division of Rehabilitation-Education
Services, Univ. Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "The initial prototype
demonstrates the capabilities of the tool to analyze images for alternative
representations. The author can review, change and add to the current attributes
for ALT, TITLE and LONGDESC information to their documents..." Additional
features are planned.
These tools assist Web users
rather than authors to either modify a page or supplement an assistive technology
or browser. Some of these tools integrate into the browser although most of
them work by proxy: using a piece of software that sits between the user and
the target server to transform a page to make it more accessible. All of these
tools are also evaluation tools, since pages that can not transform in a decent
way are probably broken beyond repair.
At Univ. Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
Goal is to create a web browser using Internet Explorer as a COM object, to
improve accessibility for people with visual impairments.
By Gerald Oskoboiny.
It shows a textual version of how a site looks in Lynx. However, links
are not clickable, and doesn't show the ALT text or URL's corresponding to
AREA's of image map like Lynx does (2/25/2000)
Shows how a page will
look in Lynx. Links are clickable. If you click on links in the resulting
page, they will also be filtered through Lynx viewer. It also handles frames
the way Lynx does. However, doesn not give menu of the ALT text or URL's
of the AREAS like lynx does. Perl Source is posted at the site. (2/25/2000)
The Office HTML Filter
is a tool, provided by Microsoft, that you can use to remove Office-specific
markup tags embedded in Office 2000 documents (.g. Word) saved as Hypertext
Markup Language (HTML).
a resource designed to
help people with visual disabilities work more effectively with Adobe® Acrobat®
software and Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) files.
Special purpose filter
that converts Internet Society Request for Comments into HTML. Model
of a converter for a special text format for people who like to program
in Perl. For an example of this filter in action, see http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616.html.
An open source development
kit from IBM, an architecture and framework for creating intermediary applications
on the web. It's a programmable proxy and web server that can run on
the user's machine or remotely. A very promising platform for building
filters and transformation tools to repair web sites. Java based, so
it should run anywhere. (LRK 1/19/2001)
An Open-Source (GPL)
filtering HTTP proxy. "It can disable animated GIFs, compress documents on-the-fly
(with gzip), enhance your privacy (remove user-agent: header and obfuscate
IP address), and remove all HTML crap. It can be completely customized to
your needs.". Although not advertised an an accessibility tranform tool, the
customization feature (an XML file BTW) would facilitate that use. (LRK 4/18/2001)
