A Review of Free, Online Accessibility Tools
So Which Tool is Right for You?

Accessibility tools provide web designers, developers and evaluators with a great first step toward web accessibility. Depending on your needs, each tool offers different report formats, additional features, and benefits that can help you choose a tool for your situation. So which tool is right for you? That depends on your skill set and how you define your web responsibilities. Throughout this review, three general audiences have been identified: web designers, developers, and evaluators.

Web Designers

Web designers generally have competency with graphic design, HTML mark-up, Cascading Style Sheets, and scripting languages. Web designers are generally involved with the "front-end" creation of web sites. Depending on the level of familiarity with HTML code any of the following accessibility report formats may work well for them:

• Text-Based: Errors Listed by Line Number
• Text-Based: Errors Listed by Linkable Line Number
• Text-Based: Errors Listed within Source Code
• Text-Based: Errors Listed within Source Code and GUI
• Graphic/Icon-Based

Additionally, web designers should consider all the extra features accessibility tools offer when selecting a tool. Based on report formats, the following tools would work well for most web designers:

• Accessibility Valet Demonstrator
• AccMonitor
• Cynthia Says
• TAW
• Torquemada
• Wave 3.5
• WebXact

Web Developers

Web developers combine knowledge of computer programming languages with database design to create the "backend" of most web sites. Web developers have a solid understanding of mark-up languages and any of the following accessibility report formats may work well for them:

• Text-Based: Errors Listed by Linkable Line Number
• Text-Based: Errors Listed within Source Code
• Text-Based: Errors Listed within Source Code and GUI
• EARL Report

Like web designers, web developers should look at all the additional features offered by accessibility tools when selecting a tool for their needs. Based off of the report formats the following tools would work well for web developers:

• Accessibility Valet Demonstrator
• Torquemada

Web Evaluators

Web evaluators generally serve web site teams as administrators. Evaluators focus their attention on checking the site to see if it meets organizational, national, and international standards. In some situations, web evaluators have less knowledge of HTML code and therefore can look at the whole web site from a different perspective. Any of the following accessibility report formats may work well for them:

• Text-Based: Errors Listed by Line Number
• Text-Based: Errors Listed within Source Code and GUI
• Graphic/Icon-Based

Like the other audiences discussed, web evaluators need to consider which additional features accessibility tools offer that will meet their needs. Based off of the suggested report formats the following list of tools may work well for web evaluators:

• Accessibility Valet Demonstrator
• AccMonitor
• Cynthia Says
• TAW
• Torquemada
• Wave 3.5
• WebXact

As can be seen from the tool recommendation lists, one tool can work for multiple audiences. When deciding which tool to use the most important concept to remember is that using tools to check for accessibility is just the first step toward web access. Web designers, developers, and evaluators who understand both WCAG 1.0 and Section 508 Guidelines and how they should be implemented into web sites will be able to help the web site team more than any tool.