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Tailslide -> RE: Is this any good? (11/8/2007 3:00:23)
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I'd agree completely with Mark - Watchfire is good to a certain extent, but it can send you into an unecessary panic! I'd tend to use Cynthia as a gross error checker and frankly just common sense for the rest. It's very hard to find an infallible accessibility checker as the website accessibility can often be a case of compromise and human insight.
A good example of this is both Tabindexes and Access Keys which are in the accessibility recommendations BUT can actually make a page less accessible and should generally be avoided (unless in the case of tabindexes you've got a very complex setup with a form for instance - but most wouldn't need it). Plus there are things that wouldn't show up on a checker like these such as the infamous "click here" links.
I find that in the end you end up with your own personal checklist for accessibility (which gets expanded occasionally due to new information).
My personal checklist would be:
1. Make sure layout can cope with text resizing
2. Make sure there's a decent level of contrast between text/background
3. Make sure that all informational images have good alt text
4. Make sure that all non-informational images are either background images or have blank alt attributes (alt="")
5. Make sure that all links have decent link text and if necessary give them a title attribute (preferably not). If you need a "click here" type link then have more information in the link text and remove the rest of it off-screen e.g. <a href="whatever"><span class="shift-left">For more information about blah blah blah,</span> Click here</a>
6. Make sure all form inputs have labels and preferably labels and fieldsets
7. Make sure all data tables have captions, row headers etc and that they linearise properly
8. Give all pages skip links.
9. Ensure that there's a contact email for accessibility queries
10. Make sure that the page works without Javascript/Flash (maybe not as pretty - but it works).
11. Make sure that dropdown menus work with keyboards and that if they use JS that they fail gracefully (e.g. alternate list of links for subpages on the top level pages)
12. Make sure that links have focus/active effects just like the hover effect
13. Make sure that the site makes sense and is usable without Images (especially the navigation)
14. Make sure that the language used is straightforward and understandable
Got to take the kids to school so that's it for now. Think it's most of it - nothing too onerous except possibly the dropdown situation which can be a real pain sometimes but is definitely do-able.
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