Shayna Productions - Sandy Clark

Part of the problem with testing for web accessibility is the fact that while people want an easy way to do it, so much of accessibility is subjective that it is impossible for a program to test correctly for everything. This is why using online testers like "Bobby" were such a nightmare. While you can use Bobby to tell you that every image tag has an alt attribute, there is no way for an automated testing program to tell whether the information in the alt tag conforms to what the image actually presents.

Recently a consortium 23 European Union countries, collaborated to come up with a methodology to standardize assesment and testing of web pages. The very interesting part of this is that they chose to come up with a methodology to standardize based on the W3C's WCAG 1.0 for Priority 1 and Priority 2.

The methodology is available online via a PDF file. It is 140 pages and is aimed at two groups. The makers of accessibility testing tools, and users who want to test for accessibility. Each guideline consists of one or more tests, the test covers which tags, the tests to use and which set of results results in a Pass or which in a Fail. It also indicates whether or not the test can be automated. Tests can range from xHTML tests, CSS tests and tests on external objects.

While the methodology does not currently cover Section 508, the people at Section 508.gov currently map all but 4 paragraphs (m-p) to specific guidelines in the WCAG. Therefore, most of Section 508 is also covered in this.

Its an interesting read and one that I for one intend to spend time with.