Ensure constant accessibility

[heyakyra]

First, I would say that the best way to test for accessibility is to experience your website through assistive technology like Orca screen reader,, Jovie (http://kde.org/applications/utilities/jovie/), or at least a basic screen reader extension for Firefox like: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/screen-reader-simulator/?src=search

If you want to us a validator to go through your code, here are some things available:

http://www.achecker.ca (currently offline) project page: http://www.atutor.ca/achecker/
http://www.cynthiasays.com/
http://wave.webaim.org/
http://fae.cita.uiuc.edu/
http://checkwebsite.erigami.com/accessibility.html

[qq99]

Thanks for the excellent resources :) Definitely something I'll keep in mind

Have you tested it out?

[heyakyra]

Testing using Cynthia Says, it fails section 508 and WCAG A because:

INPUT element does not use an ALT attribute, TITLE attribute or linked LABEL.

It fails AA because it uses px/pt instead of percent, em, or named font size for font sizes

It fails WCAG 2.0 AAA because:

It does not provide a help link on every Web page
It does not ensure that a contrast ratio of at least 7:1

I couldn't get the plugin that I linked working so I filed a bug report: eeejay/screen-reader-simulator#1

Orca screen reader wouldn't read Firefox for some reason, but Epiphany (Gnome Web) worked fine. The first time I loaded the page, it read "The beginning of time. Nothing exists beyond this point." and then proceeded to read the contents of the right hand sidebar. The next time I loaded the page, it started reading at the same spot, but continued through the chat history starting from the top (oldest) first. Both ways are probably pretty bad.

[qq99]

Thanks!

[heyakyra]

Also just found this: http://a11yproject.com