Automated tools are tools that automatically check a website for accessibility against a particular standard e.g. WCAG 1.0 Guidelines or Section 508. There are many of these tools available some of which are discussed below.
A web developer needs to be aware that automated tools can not discover all of the accessibility problems that may exist on a web page. In order to try and discover all of the accessibility problems on a web page it is recommended that a web developer use a combination of the different types of testing discussed on this website. However automated testing tools are very useful for discovering “basic” accessibility errors e.g. missing alt texts on images or a data entry field that does not have a label on a form etc.
Bobby was released in September 1996, it is an accessibility validator which was offered by CAST Bobby was then brought by Watchfire and Bobby can now be found on the Watchfire website.
The Bobby accessibility guidelines are based on the W3C WCAG guidelines, there are priority 1, priority 2 and priority 3 guidelines. Similarly to the WCAG guidelines the priority 1 guidelines are the things that web developers must do in order to make their websites accessible. While the priority 2 guidelines are the things that web developers should do after they have met all the priority one guidelines. The priority 3 guidelines are things that the web developer may do to improve the accessibility of their site given that they already met all of the priority 1 and priority 2 guidelines. For a web page to become “Bobby Approved” it must meet all of the priority 1 guidelines.
Bobby can validate a web page against the WCAG 1.0 or Section 508 guidelines, it will also check for browser compliance and HTML DTD levels. A web developer can choose which set of guidelines they want there web page to be tested against in the Bobby preferences. When Bobby assess a website it produces a report for the web developer. The following information is included in a Bobby report.
Bobby will give the web developer a summary of the web page. The summary will show whether or not the web page complies with the Bobby standard. If the web page is complies with the Bobby standard then the web developer will be offered the source code to put the “Bobby Approved” logo on that page.
If a web page is not compliant with the Bobby standard then the web developer will receive a message telling them the repairs that need to be carried out for the page to meet the Bobby standard. It then displays the page showing the non-compliant areas (priority 1 errors are represented by a helmet) and other possible accessibility problems (represented by question marks).
If will then give the web developer a list of errors and potential problems in text format. The Bobby report will also tell the web developer which line of the HTML code the problem exists on, and will give the developer advice about how to fix that problem. Bobby also provides additional help for any problems or potential problems that may require manual checks. It offers advice about what to look for when the web developer is carrying out these manual checks, source code examples are also provided.
The online version of Bobby will only let somebody test one page per minute. Meanwhile the full version of Bobby solves this problem because it can test multiple pages at once. However the full version of Bobby needs to be downloaded from the Bobby website and there is a fee charged for doing this.
The full version of Bobby will give a history of the pages that have been analysed in the past, showing the number of errors and the number of user checks that needed to carried out. Clicking on the URL of the page allows a web developer to view the full report for that particular web page. It will then list the issues that it found on that particular web page. The web developer is then able to click on a specific issue and it will bring up the Bobby help file which will give the developer specific advice about how to correct the problem.
Just because a page becomes Bobby approved does not mean it is accessible. To ensure that a pager is accessible a web developer needs to use a combination of techniques e.g. automated testing tools, manual testing and using and blind and visually impaired user to test the website for accessibility.
LIFT is a form based validation service that will send a report via email explaining the errors that exist on a website, it then gives the code needed to fix these error. It is considered much easier to use than Bobby but LIFT reports do not contain the same depth as Bobby reports. LIFT is also included in the Dreamweaver MX and Dreamweaver 2004 authoring tool packages. This allows a web developer to test there website for accessibility before they put it up “live” onto the website. LIFT can also be purchased separately and added on to FrontPage 2000 and 2002, although the add-on will not work in FrontPage 2003. LIFT will check the following.
More information about LIFT can be found on the usable net website.
webSAT was developed by the National Institute for Standards and Technology in America. This is a tool that mainly tests usability, but it has several accessibility tests. webSAT will only allow 5 pages at a time to be tested. However it can be downloaded and run on a local machine. webSAT's accessibility testing includes testing HTML for accessibility and checking that all images have alt text, as well as the use of frames and colour. It also checks to see if a form has properly labelled buttons.
The W3C HTML Validation Service tests that the HTML on a web page conforms to the W3C specifications. It allows the web developer to test current and past versions of HTML as long as they specify a DOCTYPE at the top of their web page. All they have to do is go to the validator website and enter the URL of the page that they want to validate. They can then have the results displayed in number of different formats.
The W3C CSS Validation Service reviews a web page for the use of proper Cascading Style Sheets. All the web developer has to do is either specify the URL of a page that uses the style sheet to be tested, copy the CSS code into the text box on the site for review or upload a CSS file for validation.
Webint is a freeware program that tests HTML syntax. It also tests to see if all images on a web page have alt text as well as browser compliance.
Doctor HTML is a form based validation service that allows you to test several pages at a time it will check the following.
It is considered that ALTifier can automate the task of adding alt text to all of the images on a web page, this includes images, image maps, frames and other objects. It does this by scanning the HTML code on a web page for IMG and other object elements. It then checks that each of these elements contains an alt, title and longdesc attribute (title is only checked for frames and objects). It then automatically adds alt text to an image by guessing what the alt text should be based on the content of the page. This is a very good website that contains More information about ALTifier.
The LYNX Viewerallows web developers to see what their web page would look like in a text only browser such as LYNX. This also gives the web developer some indication of how their web page would be interpreted by a screen reader. More information about LYNX can be found on the text-only browsers page.
If a web developer uses Wave to analyse a webpage page then it will give the web developer the following information.
A-Prompt can be downloaded free of charge. The University of Toronto and the University of Wisconsin created it. It can check a web page against the WCAG and Section 508 standards. When it detects an error A-Prompt will give advice about how to fix the error. It can also automate certain accessibility tasks such as the addition of alt text to images and the conversion of server-side image maps to client-side image maps. The A-Prompt accessibility tool can be downloaded from rhe A-Prompt website.
HTML tidy is considered to be a very useful accessibility tool it will clean up HTML to ensure that the HTML produced is valid. It offers advice on how to make corrections to HTML for accessibility. HTML tidy uses HTML 4.0 guidelines; therefore the validated HTML will be HTML 4.0 strict. More information about the HTML tidy tool can be found on Dave Raggett's HTML tidy page.