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 
To: Sailesh Panchang 
Cc: Alice Good ; 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