When designing, developing, or creating digital content, use various methods, including checklists, automated checkers, and the Web Content Accessibility Guideline standards, to ensure accessibility. Use the list of resources and tools below to get started.
Evaluation Guides and Checklists
Checklists and evaluation guides are one way to help ensure the accessibility of your digital content. Below are some reputable options to assist you in creating accessible content.
Digital Documents
- WebAIM’s Word and PowerPoint Accessibility Evaluation Guide provides a step-by-step walkthrough on how to apply accessibility principles when creating a Word document or PowerPoint presentation.
Web Content
Introductory
- W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) Easy Checks: Provides a foundational understanding of a page’s accessibility.
- WebAIM’s WCAG 2 Checklist: A valuable resource for beginners, presenting the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines in a simplified list format for better understanding.
- WebAIM Quick Reference: A great starting point for evaluating a website’s accessibility.
Intermediate
- U.S. General Services Administration Checklist: Prioritizes issues as critical, less critical, and minor, and categorized by topic.
- Section 508 ICT Testing Baseline for Web: Identifies minimum requirements for testing web content to meet Revised Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act (29 U.S.C. 794d).
- Deque’s Web Accessibility Checklist: Organizes WCAG requirements and best practices by topic or alphabetically.
- Elsevier’s Accessibility Checklist: Features a filter that allows users to search for WCAG requirements tailored to various coding platforms, such as JavaScript. It is highly beneficial for UX designers, developers, and coders.
- Intopia’s Accessibility Guidance Tool: Allows filtering by job roles and topics, such as moving content.
Accessibility Checkers
Automated checkers provide a quick and easy way to assess digital content for accessibility, but they can’t catch every potential accessibility issue. The list below includes various checkers to help ensure the accessibility of your digital content. Note: For faculty seeking information on tools to assist with creating accessible course materials, please visit the Missouri Online website.
Digital Documents
- Running the Accessibility Checker in Microsoft Office is essential before sharing or converting a document to PDF format.
- The free PDF Accessibility Checker includes a convenient screen reader preview window allowing you to quickly visualize the semantic structure visually without needing a screen reader.
- Follow these step-by-step instructions on how to use Adobe Acrobat Pro’s Built-in Accessibility Checker to assess your PDF and identify necessary accessibility improvements.
Color Contrast
Color contrast tools streamline the design phase by quickly assessing text legibility and ensuring adequate visual contrast. Many color contrast checkers are available online to help ensure your designs meet accessibility standards. Below, we’ve listed some well-known tools to help you get started, but you can explore others to find the one that best suits your needs.
- TPGi’s Colour Contrast Analyzer (Windows/Mac): A desktop application for Windows and macOS that helps designers and developers assess color contrast in digital interfaces to ensure readability and compliance with accessibility standards.
- Contraste app (macOS): An application for macOS that allows users to check color contrast ratios directly on their desktop, providing quick evaluations of text and background color combinations for accessibility.
- WebAIM’s Color Contrast Checker (Online): This is an online tool provided by WebAIM that enables users to input foreground and background colors and instantly evaluate the color contrast ratio to ensure readability for individuals with visual impairments.
- WebAIM’s Link Contrast Checker (Online): This is another online tool from WebAIM specifically designed to check the color contrast of links against their surrounding text or background, helping to ensure links are clearly distinguishable for users with color vision deficiencies.
- Deque Color Contrast Analyzer – This online tool provided by Deque allows you to check both hex and RGB color values and features a color adjuster to quickly determine color combinations that meet accessibility standards.
Web Content
- Microsoft’s Accessibility Insights: A suite of tools by Microsoft for assessing and improving the accessibility of web applications and websites, providing insights and recommendations for accessibility improvements.
- ANDI (Accessible Name & Description Inspector): A tool developed by the Social Security Administration (SSA) that identifies accessibility issues related to accessible name and description computation in web content.
- axe DevTools (Deque): A browser extension and developer tool that integrates with Chrome and Firefox Developer Tools to provide automated accessibility testing and debugging capabilities.
- IBM Equal Access Accessibility Checker: IBM’s tool for checking web content and applications for compliance with accessibility standards, offering evaluations and guidance on accessibility improvements.
- Photosensitive Epilepsy Analysis Tool: A tool designed to assess web content for compliance with guidelines that aim to reduce the risk of seizures in individuals with photosensitive epilepsy.
- WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool (WebAIM): A widely used web accessibility evaluation tool that identifies accessibility issues in web content and provides visual feedback on web pages.
- TPGi ARC Toolkit: A toolkit that includes various accessibility evaluation tools and resources developed by TPGi, focusing on assessing web accessibility and providing remediation advice.
For a complete list of checkers, visit Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools.
Need Help?
It’s important to remember that manual testing is essential for identifying and addressing accessibility issues that automated tools may miss. For more information on requesting a consultation and integrating manual accessibility testing into your project development with trained specialists, contact the IT Accessibility Center at itaccessibility@missouri.edu.