On Thu, Apr 14, 2011 at 5:34 PM, James Morley <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Can I ask what tools and services anyone uses for accessibility testing,
> especially any particular recommendations?
>
If you've got a Mac, then there's an accessibility tool called 'VoiceOver'
built in, and something I've started to do recently is to actually try using
it on various different sites (including ones I've built).
You can activate it by holding down cmd and F5. Then it'll read out
webpages when they load, or you can interrupt and navigate through either
the page content or the links on the page. It takes a little while to figure
out the keyboard commands, but there's a tutorial you can go through which
soon gets you up and running.
When using it though, it's amazing how quickly you learn things you can fix
with your website to make it more user-friendly for those using readers. For
example, all those alt tags that you wrote in good faith thinking that you
were helping accessibility often make no sense in the context of the page.
(I often tell people that, in 95% of cases, empty alt tags are more
appropriate than filled-in ones).
Even big websites have obvious flaws. For example, the first thing you hear
when using VoiceOver on the BBC homepage is:
"visited link British Broadcasting Corporation BBC British Broadcasting
Corporation" - a bit much when all it needs to say is "BBC" (which is you
see when viewing the page).
To take another example, the Science Museum website reads out the alt tag
"Science Museum logo" as the first thing on the page (should just be
"Science Museum") and currently has a picture on the page with the alt tag
"playing with building blocks" which leads to the shop.
Most of the websites I've ever built have issues like this too - so I don't
mean to be too critical - but it just goes to show that if you don't see (or
hear) the alt tags, they usually go unnoticed!
VoiceOver isn't the only, or even the most popular, screen reader, so you
probably shouldn't rely on it too much. But, given that it's free (if you
have a Mac), and only two button-presses away, it seems like there's no good
excuse for not testing websites using it now and again.
Frankie
--
Frankie Roberto
Experience Designer, Rattle
0114 2706977
http://www.rattlecentral.com
****************************************************************
website: http://museumscomputergroup.org.uk/
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/ukmcg
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/museumscomputergroup
[un]subscribe: http://museumscomputergroup.org.uk/email-list/
****************************************************************
