Test Your Pages’ Keyboard Navigability
Learn how to test and remediate this important and sometimes tricky aspect of a web page’s operability at WebAIM’s Keyboard Accessibility page.
Check for Sufficient Colour Contrast
WAVE and the other checkers will alert you if any of your web-page text’s contrast is too low; use WebAIM’s Colour Contrast Checker to come up with colour schemes that will not fail this important test.
Check for Accessibility Violations
- WebAIM’s WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool
- Enter you page URL and WAVE will check it for accessibility problems.
- Or add the WAVE extension to Firefox or Chrome and quickly check any page you load.
- WAVE is the easiest of these checkers for beginners to use and understand.
- Deque Axe
- A free Chrome plugin
- Catches some issues that WAVE will miss; specializes in HTML semantics.
- ARC (Accessibility Resource Centre) Toolkit
- A free Chrome plugin.
- ARC Toolkit is the most thorough and detailed of these three checkers, it also requires the most coding knowledge to make full use of it.
Remember, automated tools cannot validate the accessibility of your site completely, against all WCAG 2.0 AA criteria; some things can only be evaluated with human attention.
Create Accesible PDF’s
Always prefer HTML or Microsoft Word to PDF for accessible web publishing, but, if you must publish in the PDF format, refer to Adobe’s guide to PDF Accessibility to find out how to do it right.
Test Your Site With Screen Readers
Use these free tools to test how accessible your site is for visitors who depend on hearing your content.
Useful Web Links
- U of T Accessibility Policies
- U of T Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) Statement
- U of T Recommended Technology Requirements for Remote/Online Learning
- Government of Ontario: Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA)
- Government of Ontario: Accessibility Rules for Educational Institutions
- World Wide Web Consortium (W3C): PDF Techniques to Meet the WCAG 2.0 Standard
- World Wide Web Consortium (W3C): How to Make your Presentations Accessible to All
- Canvas (aka Quercus) Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT)
- Microsoft: Windows 10 Accessibility Features
- Apple: MacOS Accessibility Features
- Zoom Accessibility Features
- YouTube: All About Captioning and Translating
- Adobe Acrobat Pro DC Accessibility Checker for PDF
- Microsoft: Improve Accessibility with the Accessibility Checker
- Microsoft: Dictate Your Documents in Word
- Microsoft: Powerpoint Live Captions & Subtitles
- Microsoft: Microsoft Stream Automatically Creates Closed Captions for Videos
- Microsoft: Use a Screen Reader to Explore and Navigate Microsoft Teams
- Microsoft: Complete Guide to Narrator
- Accessible Media Incorporated (AMI): What is Integrated Described Video?
Validate Your Website’s Code
Use the W3C’s HTML Validator, because invalid HTML is not likely to be accessible HTML.
Validate Your Stylesheets
Enter your web page’s URL, or paste your code directly into the W3C’s CSS Validation Service.
Free Courses
U of T’s AODA (Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act) Compliance Office offers the Web Content Accessibility Compliance Course.
The University community also has access to web accessibility training sessions available through LinkedIn Learning, such as the beginner’s Accessibility for Web Design course.
A Good Book
A very accessible accessibility book is Laura Kalbag’s Accessibility for Everyone. Many of you will not feel the need to read the whole book, but anyone should find her discussion of the basic principles, concepts, and techniques of web accessibility to be concise, clear, and reader-friendly.