Accessibility evaluation tool WAVE

[Allison Bloodworth]

Several years ago when I was learning about accessibility and putting  
together some accessibility resources, I found numerous WebAIM  
resources to be extremely helpful. I listed quite a few of them on  
this page: http://technology.berkeley.edu/cio/tpo/resources/ 
index.html#accessibility

The article I found most useful was the one: http://www.webaim.org/ 
articles/screenreader_testing/ which explained how to do an  
accessibility walk-through using a screen reader on any computer. It  
turns out that you can download a timed version of most screen  
readers which allows you to really see what someone using them would  
experience. There is some debate about whether you can do an  
'accurate' walk-through if you are using your sight, as well as  
whether you can really understand how the screenreader works if you  
don't spend the time learning it that a normal user would. However, I  
found doing a walk-through of a site with a screen reader to be very  
helpful (especially to gain empathy about the potential complexity of  
the tool) after spending just a short time learning the commands.

Allison

On Mar 10, 2008, at 1:55 PM, Michael S Elledge wrote:

> I've found WebAIM to be a great resource, and the WAVE to be a  
> useful tool, although it doesn't seem to provide the depth of  
> analysis that the U-Toronto Accessibility Checker provides (that  
> can be either a drawback or a benefit, depending on the  
> circumstances  :-) ) .
>
> Mike
>
> Eli Cochran wrote:
>> I just got an email from Berkeley Web Accessibility Group pointing  
>> me to WAVE, a tool published by WebAIM which does an automated  
>> site accessibility report, similar to the W3C validation tools.
>> http://wave.webaim.org/
>>
>> They have also released a Firefox plug-in that allows for local  
>> evaluations, nothing sent to the server.
>> http://wave.webaim.org/toolbar
>>
>> I briefly messed about with the plug-in and it seems useful.  
>> Perhaps someone with more experience with accessibility can do a  
>> more thorough evaluation.
>> Before today, I hadn't heard of WebAIM. Anyone have an opinion  
>> about this group in general? Should we be linking to them? Working  
>> with them?
>>
>> - Eli
>> . . . . . . . . . . .  .  .   .    .      .         .              .  
>>                     .
>>
>> Eli Cochran
>> user interaction developer
>> ETS, UC Berkeley
>>
>>
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Allison Bloodworth
Senior User Interaction Designer
Educational Technology Services
University of California, Berkeley
(415) 377-8243
abloodworth at berkeley.edu




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