Accessibility web tools

There is also a strong business case for accessibility. As shown in the previous section, accessible design improves overall user experience and satisfaction, especially in a variety of situations, across different devices, and for older users. Accessibility can enhance your brand, drive innovation, and extend your market reach. Web accessibility depends on several components working together, including web technologies, web browsers and other "user agents", authoring tools, and websites.

The W3C Web Accessibility Initiative WAI develops technical specifications, guidelines, techniques, and supporting resources that describe accessibility solutions. These are considered international standards for web accessibility; for example, WCAG 2. Many aspects of accessibility are fairly easy to understand and implement.

Some accessibility solutions are more complex and take more knowledge to implement. When developing or redesigning a website, evaluate accessibility early and throughout the development process to identify accessibility problems early, when it is easier to address them. Simple steps, such as changing settings in a browser, can help you evaluate some aspects of accessibility. Comprehensive evaluation to determine if a website meets all accessibility guidelines takes more effort.

However, currently many sites and tools are developed with accessibility barriers that make it difficult or impossible for some people to use them. Below are just a few examples. If alt text isn't provided for images, the image information is inaccessible, for example, to people who cannot see and use a screen reader that reads aloud the information on a page, including the alt text for the visual image. When equivalent alt text is provided, the information is available to people who are blind, as well as to people who turn off images for example, in areas with expensive or low bandwidth.

It's also available to technologies that cannot see images, such as search engines. Some people cannot use a mouse, including many older users with limited fine motor control.

An accessible website does not rely on the mouse; it makes all functionality available from a keyboard. Then people with disabilities can use assistive technologies that mimic the keyboard, such as speech input.

Just as images aren't available to people who can't see, audio files aren't available to people who can't hear. Providing a text transcript makes the audio information accessible to people who are deaf or hard of hearing, as well as to search engines and other technologies that can't hear. It's easy and relatively inexpensive for websites to provide transcripts. There are also transcription services that create text transcripts in HTML format. Most of the basics of accessibility are fairly easy to implement.

However, if you are new to accessibility, it takes some time and effort to learn the common issues and solutions. Here are places to start:. Some accessibility barriers are more complicated to avoid and the solutions take more development time and effort.

WAVE : According to webaim. AChecker : According to achecker. Web Accessibility : According to webaccessibility. In order to make your website useable for those with colorblindness or poor vision, you must have a certain contrast between colors across your website. Accessible Colors: allows you to input the HEX code, size and weight of your text color, HEX code of your background color and the standard your website is required to comply with.

It will then alert you to whether you are passing or failing for that particular standard, so you can make changes accordingly. This will give you results based on contrast as well as WCAG compliance levels. Accessible Brand Colors : According to abc. Accessible Color Evaluator : This tool allows you to enter multiple text and background colors to assess your overall color scheme.

If there is any flashing or flickering effects included on your website, it could trigger seizures from users on your site. That is a direct violation of website accessibility standards. Photosensitive Epilepsy Analysis Tool : This tool will help you detect and eliminate problematic flashing.

Alt-text describes images on a screen with text. So, for the visually impaired who need screen readers to use a website, the screen reader registers the alt-text in place of the image. Without alt-text for all non-text elements on the page, your website could be subject to an accessibility lawsuit.

Accessible Metrics is one tool that can test your entire site for alt-text, among other accessibility concerns, and provide a full site report. No information will be sent to the WAVE server, guaranteeing you complete privacy. If an image cannot be displayed e. However, it can also be used to find missing alt text in images, among other things.

Those who are visually impaired will struggle to understand the context of links on a website if there is not accessible text paired with the link. The link text allows a screen reader to interpret it and communicate back to the user. Empty links contain no descriptive text to show where the link goes. Many link-checking tools will check for both of these elements. Dead Link Checker: According to deadlinkchecker.