ANN: Page Valet does WCAG Accessibility Testing

Version 3.1 introduces Accessibility testing options into a rigorous
validator. Accessibility testing is based on the Web Content Accessibility
Guidelines (WCAG) of the W3C. All three of WCAG's defined priority/
conformance levels (A/AA/AAA) are supported.

Page Valet remains, as it always has been, a formally rigorous validator,
based on the OpenSP parser. The accessibility testing is additional
to validation and code normalisation. Accessibility warnings are
fully integrated with the validator output, to make it easy for authors
to identify and fix both errors and accessibility issues.

Since interpreting the WCAG involves issues of judgement (in contrast
to validation, which is rigorously defined), the accessibility
testing must tread a fine line between ignoring issues likely to
cause problems, and nagging the user with complaints about issues
that are almost certainly not a problem. I'd particularly welcome
feedback about whether people think it has achieved a sensible
level of fussiness, and what could be improved in this regard.

Page Valet took a lead amongst online validation services with the
introduction of more accurate XML messages in Version 2 last July.
Page Valet 3 (the "visual validator") introduced a radically new and
user-friendly report format in November. Accessibility testing further
consolidates its position as the leading online tool for markup testing..

As ever, comments, criticisms, bug reports welcome.

--
Nick Kew

Site Valet - the mark of Quality on the Web.
<URL:http://valet.webthing.com/>

From validating www.prestonbridge.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk :

"<link href="bridge.css" type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" media="screen">
<style type="text/css" media="all">
[WCAG1] Ensure that documents are readable without stylesheets too.

<!-- .nn4only { display: none; } -->
</style>"

A winge for inline style, but not for linked style - inconsistent.

"<big>
[WCAG2] Use CSS to control layout and presentation. "

<big> isn't deprecated !
This really shouldn't be flagged - it seems better than a style to me, and
more accessible, too, in the light of the previous warning. Similarly
<small>

"<img src="team04.jpg" alt="Phoenix in new kit" height="80" width="146"
border="0">
[WCAG2] Use CSS to control layout and presentation. "

It also winges (for another page) about <img ... border="0"> , which is
there specifically for browsers with poor css support (ie nn4).

Other useful features would be a compacted display (maybe omitting approved
code & adding line numbers), a whole site crawler (like wdg), and including
css validation (inline & linked).

Indeed. That was a conscious decision, on the premise (probably not
very well-founded) that people who use linked stylesheets are likely
to have considered the matter well, and will normally be doing the
Right Thing re: creating a consistent presentation for the whole site
(another WCAG checkpoint), whereas inline styles are a little more
likely to be being abused. OTOH, maybe that message should just be
dropped.

What do others think?

That's another one I was wondering about putting in. You're probably
right: I expect I'll take that one out.

I think I'm right on that one. It's a workaround, but the problem you're
working around is by no means critical, and the border attribute is
deprecated.

I am indeed planning alternative report formats (not line numbers: the
parser doesn't have the original code without adding a rather big processing
overhead). Watch this space!

Not planned for the free tools, but if you want to pay:-)

Possible, but no immediate plans.

Thanks for the comments!

It's probably a good guess, and it's not a bad thing to encourage people into
using linked style sheets, and this is the trend at W3C too. But it's a
debatable issue. There's the risk that reporting potential accessibility
problems will confuse, frustrate, and depress people. After all, this is a
relatively fine point as compared with the major accessibility problems on so
many pages.

This too is a moot point. Probably most uses of <big> should be flagged. They
typically reflect the idea of making something "stand out" without using
proper markup (such as heading markup). Then again, I too got such a message,
and got mildly disturbed, since I did have a reason for using <big>.
Personally, I'm willing to accept the message, after considering the pros and
cons. But here too, one might consider what the great majority of authors
thinks. Even if most of their <big> markup _is_ abuse, they'll occasionally
get confused when they actually have a defendable reason for using <big>.
Besides, they probably have something more serious to fix on their pages.

In any case, I wouldn't use "control" in the message. It promises too much in
practice, and it is misleading in principle. A verb like "suggest" would be
better.

Moreover, it is often better that the border _is_ present, since it might be
the only thing that indicates the image as a link. Besides, using
a img {border: none; }
works on IE 4+, plus some other browsers, and this covers a majority of the
browsing situations.

> I am indeed planning alternative report formats - -

Fine! Reports from accessibility tools should be accessible. There's an
increasing need for making various _reports_ more accessible. Even without
any particular disability or special browsing situation, reports from various
checkers, search forms, etc., are difficult to use: quite often there's no
immediate, obvious summary of the response at the very beginning.

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/