Official Accessibility Validator (?) (Full Version)

All Forums >> [Web Development] >> Accessibility



Message

RickP -> Official Accessibility Validator (?) (3/2/2007 14:36:53)

I've looked at a lot of the sites with 'accessibility' validation tests. I've noticed also that the W3C has logos for various accessibility levels. But I can't find a w3c validator for testing accessibility. Is there one?



womble -> RE: Official Accessibility Validator (?) (3/2/2007 14:45:48)

Not a W3C one, no.



RickP -> RE: Official Accessibility Validator (?) (3/2/2007 15:24:31)

Oh, Ok...

Seems daft that they offer compliance logos but no test for accessibilty!

What would be the nearest to a 'standard' accepted online validator?



womble -> RE: Official Accessibility Validator (?) (3/2/2007 16:09:14)

Probably Cynthia Says is one of the better known ones, but the online automated validators will only pick up gross errors. To be totally accessible (or as near as you can be) you still need to go through a lot of the checklist manually, and you can't rely on the automated checkers to "prove" that your site's accessible.



jaybee -> RE: Official Accessibility Validator (?) (3/2/2007 19:02:15)

I use Cynthia for the HTML and http://jigsaw.w3.org/ for the css. You could also use Bobby Watchfire Web Xact for the HTML. It gives a much more in depth breakdown of checkpoints.

If you have Firefox why don't you get the Web Developer toolbar extension? There is an option in there to validate your pages for just about everything.

[edit] You can tell I was doing that at 2am. The typing was appalling. [&:]



womble -> RE: Official Accessibility Validator (?) (3/3/2007 4:18:28)

Good point Jaybee.

The FF web dev toolbar always had the check HTML/check CSS option under tools, but I only just realised that now there's check WAI/Section 508 in there as well (as well as a whole host of other useful stuff), so you can check pages just with a mouse click rather than having to go off and get the page up, type in your URL, etc.



Nicole -> RE: Official Accessibility Validator (?) (3/3/2007 4:28:11)

Womble, Jaybee, RickP,

Upon reading this thread and knowing that you'd previously recommended "A-Prompt" Womble, for checking the manual things, I went looking for a link to it so Rick could download it but it's changed.

The one I have actually prompts you to check background-colours etc. so it checks the validation but also prompts you to manually check the things that can't be checked by a validator.

When I looked it up on Google, all I could come up with was the latest version which was "just another validator".



jaybee -> RE: Official Accessibility Validator (?) (3/3/2007 8:01:58)

http://www.watchfire.com/products/webxm/default.aspx

is probably the most comprehensive tool around but man is it expensive. The other guaranteed way to check is to pay Nomensa to do a complete review. Also expensive.

TBH unless it's a site for a large company or Corp then it's overkill.

http://webxact.watchfire.com/

does the same as Cynthia but breaks everything down if you have all the options switched on. It can find things Cynthia doesn't and vice versa.

Cynthia's manual check suggestions are in the side box. WebXAct puts them all in Warnings so even if your html and css come out clean in Cynthia, there will be warnings in WebXAct and they can't be got rid of by making code tweaks.

What I did with my site was got it clean in Cynthia, then ran it through Bobby, sorted anything that reported and then worked my way through the Bobby warnings until I was satisfied.



womble -> RE: Official Accessibility Validator (?) (3/3/2007 8:52:58)


quote:

ORIGINAL: jaybee

What I did with my site was got it clean in Cynthia, then ran it through Bobby, sorted anything that reported and then worked my way through the Bobby warnings until I was satisfied.

That's sort of the way I try and do it. I always check XHMTL/CSS first so I can be sure that the code's okay to start with, then start with the accessibility stuff. One thing I have found is that it's best to do it on a page by page basis as you're going along - finish a page, check (X)HTML/CSS, check accessibility etc. etc. (then go back and check it again if you're paranoid [:D]). If you make any changes to a page, unless they're very minor, check all again. If you do it on a page by page basis it's not to bad and it becomes second nature. Leave it to the end of the site though and it becomes a huge PITA and you get tempted to just skim stuff and assume things are okay. My first very large site I made that mistake with. I was overjoyed at eventually finishing the damned thing, but then I had a week of running all the checks which would have been so much less of a hassle if I'd done them as I went along...[&o]



jaybee -> RE: Official Accessibility Validator (?) (3/3/2007 9:11:06)

quote:

Leave it to the end of the site though and it becomes a huge PITA
Too right. I converted a 500 page site and validated some as I went but then just copied the valid pages as templates for others. Got to the end and had a checklist to work through.

Never again. 3 days solid and that annoying message that you have to wait because you can only validate one page every 2 minutes or whatever it is now. It drove me nuts.
quote:

If you make any changes to a page, unless they're very minor, check all again.
Now that I disagree with. If you make any changes to a page, especially if they're very minor, check all again.

It's always the quick tweak that couldn't possibly affect anything else that trips you up. I made a teeny change that only affected my home page. Worked great. A week later I wanted to add something to a deeper page and nearly had a fit when I pulled it up.



RickP -> RE: Official Accessibility Validator (?) (3/3/2007 9:52:59)

Okay, thanks All - that's useful stuff to know [;)]



womble -> RE: Official Accessibility Validator (?) (3/3/2007 11:17:11)


quote:

ORIGINAL: jaybee

Never again. 3 days solid and that annoying message that you have to wait because you can only validate one page every 2 minutes or whatever it is now. It drove me nuts.
quote:

If you make any changes to a page, unless they're very minor, check all again.
Now that I disagree with. If you make any changes to a page, especially if they're very minor, check all again.

I agree there Jaybee - I was meaning minor as in correcting a typo in text or something like that. Anything more majorishly minor than that and I would check again.



jaybee -> RE: Official Accessibility Validator (?) (3/3/2007 12:08:39)

OK guys, there's a new checker on the block

http://checkwebsite.erigami.com/accessibility.html

Word of warning, this one goes into great depth, including checking your colours to see whether it considers they have sufficient contrast. It does this by analysing your colour codes. I got a couple chucked out, I need to work out the hex codes to push them a tiny bit. My site passes fine in Vischeck so I think the guidelines that this is based on may be a little too stringent.

It also reports on Privacy and doesn't like it if you have links going direct to another web site. I haven't quite got my head around this one yet as the explanation seems a bit lame and the workaround is going to annoy the heck out of visitors I would think. Kind of an "Are you sure you want to go to this site? Yes/No" [&:]

But, if you want a comprehensive check and a load of visual check warnings then this is the one. Interesting though.



womble -> RE: Official Accessibility Validator (?) (3/3/2007 15:53:49)

Nice find Jaybee! Wombly likey! [img]http://ecanus.net/smileys/coolup-blue.gif[/img]

Eeeep! Just checked out one of my works in progress and was pleased to see I pass WCAG 1. The colour thing had me totally flummoxed though as to where precisely to look for the RGB value it was giving til I realised that you can look at a map of the page with the problem bits highlighted - very useful!

I couldn't work out the privacy thing either with the links....and I'm apparently a very naughty wombley for not having a P3P thingy.

What does confuse me is that one of the things I'm getting warnings on for WCAG2 on is not using "headers and other structural markup only for visual effects"...these are bits where I've used 'h' tags for...yep, headings....[&:]

The low contrast text thing's useful, and in one place I can see looking at it now why it could be a problem, but the other, hmmmmm....looks like I'm gonna be playing with hex codes too....

<edit>Just tried it out on a client site that's also a work in progress and was v. pleased to see it's passing WCAG2 with only a couple of warnings...it fails though on the web site quality bit though - I think that might be because I'm still waiting for actual content from the client and it doesn't class lorem ipsum as quality....obviously has no appreciation for the classics....[:D]</edit>

<edit 2>...and on the same site it's complaining about lack of contrast on an image....the image in question is a silhouette of a cat on a white background - how much more contrast can you get? [&:]...oh and it doesn't like the image replacement technique on the site's logo either...*sigh*...</edit 2>



jaybee -> RE: Official Accessibility Validator (?) (3/3/2007 16:59:44)

quote:

I couldn't work out the privacy thing either with the links....and I'm apparently a very naughty wombley for not having a P3P thingy.
I have got a P3P thingy and it still didn't like me. [:@]

I've emailed them as the whole thing is in Beta and their colour checker doesn't agree with the Accessibility Colour Wheel which says my green links are OK.

I think the problem is that if there is a background image in the div, even if it's just a tiddler and nowhere near the text, it's assumed that it'll make the text unreadable. I think that needs to go in warnings not errors.

quote:

not using "headers and other structural markup only for visual effects"...these are bits where I've used 'h' tags for...yep, headings....:)
Same here. I'm wondering if it wants the Headings unstyled?



womble -> RE: Official Accessibility Validator (?) (3/3/2007 20:18:12)

It's probably related to that menopausal CSS validator that has a strop about background colours etc. every so often. [;)][:D]

quote:

I think the problem is that if there is a background image in the div, even if it's just a tiddler and nowhere near the text, it's assumed that it'll make the text unreadable. I think that needs to go in warnings not errors.

I wondered that with a couple of images of mine. The one with the cat though isn't a background image, and there isn't a background image on that div. The silhouette, being a silhouette's obviously black (and it's very black....I should know. I spent a good couple of hours a couple of weeks ago tidying it up and recolouring odd pixels that had come out a murky shade of brown when scanned in from the client's original artwork). Black cat - white background - you can't get much more contrast than that! [&:]

quote:

quote:

not using "headers and other structural markup only for visual effects"...these are bits where I've used 'h' tags for...yep, headings....:)

Same here. I'm wondering if it wants the Headings unstyled?


Hmmm, yep, I think they've got a bit of a problem there.

I can really see that going down well with the client...."Yes, I know your site's lovely shades of lilac and purple, and I know you like your lovely logo with the fancy writing, but you can't have that because if you want it to be accessible you need to have a flippin' big heading that's twice the size of everything else, and only comes in black in TNR...oh, and while we're on the subject of black, do you think you could make that picture of the cat you supplied me with just a little more black as it doesn't show up too well against the white background....That okay?" [:D]



Donkey -> RE: Official Accessibility Validator (?) (3/4/2007 6:48:13)

Aren't a lot of these tests subjective? I think the people who decide the criteria could be generalising too much. For instance the colour contrast thing - there are at least two different "standards" that are quite different the w3c formula and that adopted by Hewlet Packard.

Now in my humble opinion if your site passes as readable by the colour blind using one of the on-line checkers available eg http://colorfilter.wickline.org/ then I don't see why some subjective view made by some geek at the w3c has any relevance. If a non-colourblind person has eyesite so bad that they can't distinguish the difference between colours that a colourblind person can then they'll be using a screen reader.

If you ask me this is not about real accessibility, it's about some politically correct wrong-headed view of accessibility.

If we are to make sites accessible to standards then the standards should be universal and should be credible.



jaybee -> RE: Official Accessibility Validator (?) (3/4/2007 7:08:03)

Yes, I agree but this checker is in beta and they're still working on it and asking for feedback. It could be a really good tool if they get some of these issues right. I personally think the W3C guidelines for brightness and contrast are a bit too stringent.

For example, if you follow their rules, orange cannot be used, full stop. Not even shades of it. I played around with a number of colour codes and it just won't have it, whether it's on a white background or dark.

Out of interest I ran the accessites.org page through as their new design has similar colours to my site and theirs fared far worse than mine did. It doesn't seem to be consistent though. It complains about some lines but completely ignores others of the same colour.

Wombly it might be worth you sending them some feedback and asking them why your image is being thrown out.




womble -> RE: Official Accessibility Validator (?) (3/4/2007 7:13:27)

I might do that Jaybee. Some of the images I can see why they could potentially cause a problem, but with the black cat, white background one, probably the only person who'd have trouble with that would be Michael Jackson [8D]



Page: [1]

Valid CSS!




Forum Software © ASPPlayground.NET Advanced Edition 2.4.5 ANSI
6.201172E-02