This page contains material from a presentation at the WAI Best Practices Exchange
Training in Madrid, Spain in February 2004.
Evaluation Tools Demonstration
Shadi Abou-Zahra, W3C
WAI
Last updated: 8 February 2004
Contents
- Evaluation Tools
- Test pages against a set of rules
- Repair Tools
- Propose repair suggestions or opportunities
- Transformation Tools
- Modify the presentation to highlight issues
Measurements of Tools
- Precision
- How accurate checkpoints are tested
- User Friendliness
- How easy is it to utilize the tool
- Coverage
- How many checkpoints are tested
- Features
- accurate provided by the tool
Online Tools
Usually the generated report is a table consisting of:
- Results of the conducted tests are sorted in some form
- Text for each checkpoint and possibly more information
- Possibly an overall conformance claim for the tested page
Desktop Tools
Usually provide features such as:
- Dynamic sorting and filtering of the generated results
- More sophisticated customization possibilities
- User interfaces that are easier to use for some people
Transformation Tools
- Are generally focused tools that highlight specific issues
- Very helpful in the proto-typing phase of Web site development
- Often the results are applicable to useability aspects as well
Validation Tools
- Check HTML, XHTML and CSS markup against the specification
- Often built into content authoring tools and easy to use
- Usually indicate deprecated and browser specific markup
Summary
- Use as good variety of tools and don't fully rely on their results
- Use the tools during the design, implementation and operational
phase
- The aim is to implement accessible pages rather than satisfy a tool