Bobby And Cynthia - Two Tools To Test Your Pages For Accessibility

This article is part of the Joy Gems series which originally appeared in The Joy Gems Newsletter and/or The Home Page Helper Network on ryze.com, a business networking community.

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Sometimes I wonder if I am becoming a slave to validation. Check this, check that. Being turned in the direction of Quality Assurance can drive me nuts.

But as some of you may know I am pretty well bent towards the idea of using accessibility as a design construct. Personally, I prefer the word universal design if for no other reason than the word "accessibility" has been co-opted to mean something that only applies to people with disabilities.

Whenever I say "favor accessible web design as my design model" people thing that I'm only interested in designing web sites for the disabled. This is crazy but that's how people translate - incorrectly - what I say.

True, accessible web design is a method by which we make web delivered content reachable and understandable to those with disabilities. But in so doing we make the online experience better for the larger public. It's the latter that interests me as much as the former.

If you're not sure what I mean think of the simple example of how wheelchair ramps help many more people than those who are in wheelchairs. Accessible web design works the same way and in fact has been referred to as "Electronic Curb Cuts."

To that end here are two good online tools that will help you test your pages for their conformance to accessibility standards. The two main sets of standards are (to call them standards is not quite accurate but you'll get the idea):

1. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines as set forth by the W3C
2. Section 508 of the US Federal Government

(Sounds like a topic for a future Joy Gems).

As always, these tools are in development, getting better as time goes by.

Bobby

Well, speaking of things being in development I've just discovered, in preparation for this issue of Joy Gems, that Bobby is about to go out of existence. It was the most well known of all tools that test pages for accessibility. It's hard to believe because I started using it years ago.

But fear not. Starting May 1, 2005 Bobby is making it's transition to WebXACT (it's already operational). According to Watchfire (the company that develops and operates Bobby and WebXACT). What Bobby does will be incorporated into a broad suite of tools that assess a page's quality (for example - broken links, browser compatibility, etc) and privacy.

WebXACT's online tool gives users a good idea as to the sophisticated services available through Watchfire . Their online tool is free.

Now that's a great idea for a more thorough review in a future Joy Gems because I'm definitely going to be using WebXACT.

Cynthia Says

At least good old Cynthia is still the same (for now).

Cynthia is being developed by HiSoftware, a major player in QA software development and The International Center For Disability Resources on the Internet.

Paste in your URL, choose your testing variables and away you go with Cynthia Says.