Testing tools of the trade for the Accessibility professional

Ben Logan - Published: 16th Feb 2009 09:15 GMT

Most accessibility testers and professionals will use a range of tools to help them in their job in order to successfully review a site for accessibility compliance.

What not everybody knows is that nearly all of these tools are free and available on the web. In this article we are going to take a very quick look at each one and give you a run down of what each one does.

1. The Web Accessibility Toolbar version 2.0 by the Paciello Group

This is sitting at the very top of the pile in terms of tools you absolutely must download as an accessibility professional.

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The tool bar installs in your browser and comes loaded with options and presets you can use in order to run tests for accessibility.

You can use the tool bar to run tests such as showing all the alt attributes on the page and validating your code against the online W3C Validator.

You can also check the document has well formed structural elements such as the correct HTML heading tags e.g. <h1>Heading level 1</h1>

Download the Web Accessibility Toolbar 2.0

2. Colour Contrast Analyser version 2.2 by the Paciello Group

This tool actually comes bundled with the Web Accessibility Toolbar 2.0 but is available as a standalone application. We tend to use both and the standalone Colour Contrast Analyser can be very useful if you do not wish to install anything within the web browser during the testing process.

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Colour contrast is a very subjective thing. It depends on technical factors like the quality and settings of the screen, environmental factors like glaring sunlight, and the physical abilities of the person viewing it.

Colour contrast analysers are different in that they use algorithms from the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) to obtain verifiable, objective results for luminosity, brightness and contrast.

Download the Contrast Analyser Version 2.2 by the Paciello Group

3. Lynx 2.8.6 text only Browser

When you first run this tool you will notice that it looks like an old computer application from the 1980's.

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Lynx was once popular with visually-impaired users due to use of its text-to-speech-friendly interface. It is used less by the mainstream visually impaired community, but is still used with people who have attention deficit disorder as it reduces the amount of distractions that can potentially be on a web page.

The tool essentially removes all graphics, multi-media files such as Adobe Flash, and also JavaScript. Lynx can show you onscreen where you have items coded as HTML lists and any semantic structure with HTML headings.

The tool is also a great low cost way for developers to sanity check their development work.

Download Lynx text only browser 2.8.6

4. Jaws Screen reader version 10 by Freedom Scientific

Jaws is an extremely powerful Screen reader and is the most used product by visually impaired users. It is often compared to Internet Explorer in terms of market share for the blind community.

Screen readers are used by people who are blind or nearly blind. Listening to the web is a very different experience from looking at it as it becomes a stream of words. Screen reader users also don't use a mouse to navigate, instead they use only the keyboard.

Jaws is used in conjunction with web browsers and applications such as Microsoft® Office Suite, MSN Messenger®, Adobe® Acrobat Reader, Internet Explorer® 7, Firefox® and many more applications.

This tool is not free and is not cheap either with a license coming in around £800 in the UK.

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Download a trial version of Jaws version 10

5. ZoomText version 9.1 Screen magnifier by Ai Squared

ZoomText is a product by Ai Squared and is aimed at the low vision market. The product works by magnifying what is on the screen against a magnification level a users sets. We have seen 8x magnification being applied in most of the testing sessions we have conducted but in some cases the magnification level can go up to 32x magnification.

The product comes in several flavours and incorporates a version that combines a full screen reader with a screen magnifier. We have found that most users with a low vision impairment tend to use just the magnifier product and not the combined screenreader and screen magnifier product.

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