RE: Selecting Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools

Sailesh,

This is an example of a specific user looking for a tool for one
specific organization. I am sure users on WAI-IG have a whole spectrum
of recommendations according to their roles, organization, and
experience. Anyway, this is really not the point here.

While I agree with you that automation is a very important aspect to
look at while selecting evaluation tools, I ask myself what do we do
with checkpoints that are not (yet) automatable by machines? Do we not
want to help developers find appropriate tools to assist the manual
evaluations they have to carry out anyway?

Of course, all these are just interim solutions while authoring tools
slowly increase their support for accessibility by providing in-line
automated checking and filters to better assist the Web developers...

Regards,
  Shadi


-----Original Message-----
From: w3c-wai-eo-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-eo-request@w3.org] On
Behalf Of Sailesh Panchang
Sent: Friday, January 28, 2005 16:19
To: w3c-wai-eo@w3.org
Subject: Selecting Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools


Hello All,
Here is a real life situation of a  person trying to evaluate tools. The
individual lists a few features one should look for. This was an
exchange on the WAI-IG list.
Thanks,
Sailesh
 
----- Original Message ----- 
From: Brent Morris <mailto:brainsquared@gmail.com>  
To: Sailesh Panchang <mailto:sailesh.panchang@deque.com>  
Cc: Alice Good <mailto:alice.good@port.ac.uk>  ; w3c-wai-ig@w3.org 
Sent: Wednesday, October 27, 2004 3:03 PM
Subject: Re: Bobby - a bad tool


I would also recommend RAMP from Deque[1], I spent the last summer
researching accessibility tools for a government institution. I found
that Deque's software was the easiest to use by a person not trained at
checking web accessibility. I also found that it had the lowest amount
of false positives and false negatives.

I would not recommend CynthiaSays[2] or it's commercial version
AccVerify[3], I tested it extensively and found that it missed many
errors that Ramp did not.

I looked at InFocus[4] and LIFT[5] too. But I was not particularly happy
with these products. InFocus was okay but I found it slow and not
user-friendly for those nont experienced with HTML. And I couldn't
convince the people at LIFT to provide our organization to test how well
it worked so I don't trust it.

HTH,
Brent Morris
 
[1] http://www.deque.com
[2] http://www.cynthiasays.com
[3] http://www.hisoftware.com
[4] http://www.ssbtechnologies.com
[5] http://www.usablenet.com


On Wed, 27 Oct 2004 15:12:52 -0400, Sailesh Panchang
<sailesh.panchang@deque.com> wrote:
>  
> Hello Alice, 
> >Can anyone recommend a credible accessbility >checker please?
>  
> You could try Ramp from Deque Systems (www.deque.com). It has both
> accessibility checker as well as repair capabilities. Ramp can handle
15 of
> the 16 Sec 508 checks and most of the   WCAG 1.0 checks. One can check
only
> against specific Sec 508 paragraphs or specific WCAG checkpoints and
turn
> off the others. 
> It lets the evaluator choose how certain violations are to be
identified  
> based on a set of options. 
> For some checks it asks questions with specific answer choices based
on
> which it determines if the code presents an accessibility barrier. The
> repair can be done in two stages: some violations can be autofixed by
Ramp
> and can be  done across a Web page or the site or folder that has been
> evaluated. It presents a dialog box approach for the rest. Its
reporting
> capabilities are extensive too and meets needs of Managers, developers
and
> reviewers. I can go on but it is best you write to me off list. 
> Sailesh Panchang
> Senior Accessibility Engineer 
> Deque Systems,11180  Sunrise Valley Drive, 
> 4th Floor, Reston VA 20191
> Tel: 703-225-0380 Extension 105 
> E-mail: sailesh.panchang@deque.com
> Fax: 703-225-0387
> * Look up <http://www.deque.com> * 
>   
> 
>   


-- 
Brent Morris

Received on Friday, 28 January 2005 15:54:04 UTC