Tools

Standards & Checklists

• IITAA Implementation Guidelines for Web - MSF&W helped develop the IITAA guidelines as a concise, easy-to-understand synthesis of the W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 and Federal Section 508 standards.
• IITAA Web Developer Testing Checklist - This set of quick and easy tests can be used to check accessibility during development.

Online Testing Tools

• W3C Markup Validation Service -The W3C validator tests live or local (uploaded) web pages for valid HTML/XHTML code, the foundation for accessibility.
• Functional Accessibility Evaluator (FAE) - FAE automatically tests live web pages and/or sites for compliance with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's Web Accessibility Best Practices. MSF&W is currently working with UIUC to update FAE to test against the latest Illinois accessibility stanards.
• WAVE - WebAIM's web accessibility evaluation tool test pages against leading accessibility standards and helps authors visualize accessibility issues. WAVE can test live and local pages and is the first of a new breed of testing tools that can check JavaScript-generated content.
• ATRC Web Accessibility Checker - The University of Toronto's experimental checker uses up to 267 automatic and manual accessibility tests to check live and local pages.
• Cynthia Says - Based on HiSoftware's AccMonitor, Cynthia automatically tests for compliance with W3C and/or Section 508 accessibility standards. It can only test live pages.
• Contrast Ratio Calculator - MSF&W's online calculator can be used to check whether colors on your pages meet minimum contrast requirements.

Toolbars

• Web Accessibility Toolbar for IE, Version 2.0 - a free tool to help web developers and advanced users examine the structure and accessibility of web pages, including tables, headings, form fields, images and more.
• Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar - a free tool from Microsoft that includes a DOM inspector, image report, and easy means of switching off CSS and scripts.
• Web Developer extension for Firefox - a similar (or better) toolbar for Firefox.

Favelets

A set of JavaScript tools that can help in testing for accessibility. Using Internet Explorer 6 or 7, right click on a link below and select Add to Favorites:

• 800x600 - resizes the browser window to 800 by 600 pixels.
• No Color - replaces colors with gray.
• No Styles - disables CSS styles.
• No Images - replaces images with their alt text.
• Show Headings - highlights headings: h1s in red, h2s in orange, h3s in yellow, h4s in green, h5s in blue, and h6s in purple.
• Show Lists - outlines lists in red.
• Show Tables - outlines tables in red.
• Show Table Cells - outlines table cells in red; highlights table headers.
• Show Table Relationships - highlights table cells that are related using "id" and "headers" markup: hover over a header to highlight associated cells; hover over a data cell to highlight associated headers (requires IE7).
• No Tables - linearizes tables to show the order in which content would be read by a screen reader.

Assistive Technology Software

• ZoomText trial - screen magnification software from Ai Squared.
• JAWS trial - screen reading software from Freedom Scientific.
• Window-Eyes trial - screen reading software from GW Micro
• Assistive Technology Quick Reference - the essential commands for operating ZoomText, JAWS, and related accessibility features.

More Information

For more information about accessibility tools and testing techniques, please email accessibility@msfw.com or call (217) 698-3535 · (217) 698-1353 TTY.