Why Evaluate

Evaluation should be carried out throughout the development process:

• Get a quick, rough idea of the website
• Learn about general or specific issues
• Investigate particular issues or aspects
• Testing of features during development
• Get objective opinion on conformance
• Get comprehensive feedback analysis
• Monitor on-going accessibility progress

Incremental Assessment

Steps to effectively assess and improve your website for accessibility:

• Carry out preliminary evaluation
• Fix obvious accessibility issues
• Carry out conformance evaluation
• Fix obvious accessibility issues
• Carry out evaluation with users
• Fix obvious accessibility issues
• Work with users to resolve issues
• Continue to monitor your progress

Skills for Evaluation

Web accessibility evaluation can be done by people with different skills:

• Some aspects can be checked by anyone
• Some aspects need technical expertise
• Some aspects need knowledge of users
• Some aspects need usability expertise

Sampling Web Pages

Representative samples should include pages developed by different people and that include different features (such as lists, tables, forms, etc.); in particular:

• Templates, style sheets, snippets
• Home page, other important pages
• Frequently-used, high traffic pages
• Critical paths and full processes

Prioritizing Repairs

After evaluation, you may need to prioritize what to fix first:

• Impact on accessibility
• Frequently accessed pages
• Pages with significance
• Logically related pages
• Logically related repairs

Planning for Repairs

It is often also helpful to develop an implementation plan:

• Immediate
  templates, CMS configuration, ...
• Medium-term
  fixing code, adding features, ...
• Long-term
  redesign features, train developers, ...

Tip: coordinate with redesign and development cycles.

Evaluation Tools

Web accessibility evaluation tools can:

• Reduce time and effort for evaluation
• Automatically check some requirements
• Assist during the evaluation process

Types of Tools

There are many different types of web accessibility evaluation tools:

• Fully automated
• Semi-automated
• In-page feedback
• Wizzard interface
• Developer tools

List of Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools

Caution

Web accessibility evaluation tools have substantial limitations:

• Only few requirements are automatable
• Tools may be misleading or imprecise
• Prone to false positives or negatives

Selecting Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools

Conclusions

• Evaluate early and throughout
• Use combined expertise
• Involve real users
• Set pragmatic approaches
• Assess the authoring tools
• Use evaluation tools
• Train authors and developers

Questions?

Quick clarification questions welcome now.
Next: Practical Tips and Conclusions.