Ann: WCAG Accessibility testing in Page Valet

  [Apologies to those who have already seen this]

Page Valet 3.1 is now available at <URL:http://valet.webthing.com/page/>.

Version 3.1 introduces Accessibility testing options into a rigorous
validator.  Accessibility testing is based on the Web Content Accessibility
Guidelines (WCAG) of the W3C.  All three of WCAG's defined priority/
conformance levels (A/AA/AAA) are supported.

Page Valet remains, as it always has been, a formally rigorous validator,
based on the OpenSP parser.  The accessibility testing is additional
to validation and code normalisation.  Accessibility warnings are
fully integrated with the validator output, to make it easy for authors
to identify and fix both errors and accessibility issues.

Since interpreting the WCAG involves issues of judgement (in contrast
to validation, which is rigorously defined), the accessibility
testing must tread a fine line between ignoring issues likely to
cause problems, and nagging the user with complaints about issues
that are almost certainly not a problem.  I'd particularly welcome
feedback about whether people think it has achieved a sensible
level of fussiness, and what could be improved in this regard.

Page Valet took a lead amongst online validation services with the
introduction of more accurate XML messages in Version 2 last July.
Page Valet 3 (the "visual validator") introduced a radically new and
user-friendly report format in November.  Accessibility testing further
consolidates its position as the leading online tool for markup testing..

As ever, comments, criticisms, bug reports welcome.

-- 
Nick Kew

Site Valet - the mark of Quality on the Web.
<URL:http://valet.webthing.com/>

Received on Wednesday, 23 January 2002 16:09:45 UTC