A practitioner's approach to using WCAG evaluation tools

Abstract

Automatic testing tools for the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 are important for professional accessibility experts. These tools can detect approximately 50% of the success criteria. However, the rules used to detect errors are often not well documented, and even though a success criterion is said to be checked, this does not guarantee that the tool is able to detect all possible violations of this criterion. It is difficult to discern the advantages and limitations of the different tools. Media Lunde Tollefsen AS (MediaLT) has therefore started to build a resource to test the tools, not primarily to find the best in test product, but to get necessary knowledge about the tools we use in our development projects and WCAG-evaluations. The resource currently includes 11 different pages and more pages will be added to build a stable set of WCAG-errors from 31.12.17. Each page includes a list of known errors, Wave-evaluation and the possibility to send feedback. Pages for WCAG 2.1 will be added as soon as new success criteria are approved.