Tools: Accessible and Universal Design
"The power of the Web is in its universality." -- Tim Berners-Lee, W3C Director and inventor of the World Wide Web
Overviews, Guidelines, and Best Practices
- Getting Started: Making a Web Site Accessible
- W3C's quick overview, with links to all the key information.
- Web Accessibility Design Guidelines
- HTML/XHTML Accessibility Best Practices
- Illinois Center for Instructional Technology Accessibility Presentations
- UIUC Best Practices for User Centered Web Design
- Trace Center (UW-Madison)
- "A pioneer in the field of technology and disability." Has section on "Designing More Usable Web Sites."
- Curriculum on Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
- W3C curriculum that walks through all of the key information. Designed for a classroom or workshop setting; online, using a computer connected to the Internet offline, using a computer with the curriculum stored locally offline; using material printed from the site, or as a self-study tool.
- Rich Media Resource Center
- useit.com
- "usable information technology": advice and research on web design from Jakob Nielsen
- Examples of Accessible (and Inaccessible) Web Design
- This page shows examples of good and bad web page design dealing with the following topics
- Mardiros Internet Marketing
- UK-based web designers with articles on accessibility and usability.
- Collection of resources for ways to make rich media accessible to people with disabilities.
- access.adobe.com Home Page
- Help people with visual disabilities work more effectively with Adobe® Acrobat® software and Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) files.
Site Development and Testing Tools
Validators
Validation tools check your site for compliance with accessibility guidelines. Descriptions of using such tools is available as well from UIUC's description of Functional Testing for Accessibility and the Aware Center's Case Study of Site Modification to Increase Accessibility.
- W3C X/HTML Validator
- Checks HTML documents for conformance to W3C HTML and XHTML Recommendations and other HTML standards.
- W3C CSS Validator
- Provide a CSS file or a web page incorporating CSS. Also has downloadable version.
- Functional Accessibility Evaluator
- WebXACT
- formerly Bobby
- The WAVE 2.0 web page accessibility check
- Helps you check if your page is accessible to people with disabilities.
- DeLorie Authoring Services
- Services include: Lynx Viewer, Web Page Backward Compatibility Viewer, Web Page Purifier
User Agents (browsers, screen readers,etc) and User Software
User agents allow you to access pages in different ways so you can assess the experience of other users, and software tools help create better websites (instead of checking after the fact).
- Mozilla/Firefox Accessibility Extension
- This browser plugin makes it easier for people with disabilities to view and navigate web content. Developers can use the extension to check their use of structural and styling markup that support functional web accessibility.
- Illinois Accessible Web Publishing Wizard for Microsoft Office
- This Wizard provides a simple way to create highly accessible and standards compliant web versions of Office documents.
- JAWS for Windows Screen Reader Software
- information about JAWS for Windows, the world's premier screen reader software application.
- Opera Web Browser
- Excellent web browser that compares well against Netscape and Microsoft and makes a point of adding accessibility features.
- AccessX
- AccessX is a set of features within the XKEYBOARD extension of the X Window System designed to make X more accessible to users with disabilities. XKEYBOARD is present in X11R6.1 and later. AccessX is a freeware utility.
Policy Documents
Note: Section 508 requires that Federal agencies' electronic and information technology is accessible to people with disabilities.
- Policies Relating to Web Accessibility in the U.S.
- List from the W3C
- Electronic and Information Technology Accessibility Standards
- Complete 508 Guidelines (not just those relating to the web).
- Department of Justice Section 508 Home Page
- Added here for reference, but doesn't seem that useful.
- Federal IT Accessibility Initiative
- The Federal Information Technology Accessibility Initiative is a Federal government interagency effort to offer information and technical assistance to assist in the successful implementation of Section 508.
