Browser-Based Accessibility Evaluation Tools for Beginners

Fuente: ERIC Institute of Education Sciences

Saved in:

Bibliographic Details
Main Author:	McHale, Nina
Format:	Recurso educativo Open Access
Language:	en
Published:	2011
Subjects:	Computer Software Internet Librarians Web Browsers Web Sites Evaluation Library Personnel Libraries
Online Access:	Acceder al recurso
Tags:	Add Tag No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!

_version_	1867181426248515584
author	McHale, Nina
author_facet	McHale, Nina McHale, Nina
collection	Education Resources Information Center
contents	Browser-Based Accessibility Evaluation Tools for Beginners McHale, Nina Computer Software Internet Librarians Web Browsers Web Sites Evaluation Library Personnel Libraries There are hundreds of Web accessibility software options out in the world that serve many different functions. Not surprisingly, many of them are designed for users with a wide range of abilities, with the intent of making the use of computers and the Internet easier for both work and entertainment. There are, however, numerous products available for developers and librarians that assist in ensuring the computer and Web programs they develop are accessible for users with disabilities. Commercial software can be expensive. Products that are open source or that come standard with certain operating systems have a steep learning curve that makes simple accessibility evaluation tasks very difficult for librarians and library staff who are not experts in the Section 508 and/or WCAG 2.0 standards. How, then, can the librarians and library staff who make purchasing decisions about electronic resources and who develop content for their Web sites learn about accessibility and how to evaluate Web sites and products without having to devote significant time and resources? Even for Web and systems librarians who may be knowledgeable about Web standards, using a screen reader to evaluate can be time-consuming, as it can take a long time to read all of the screens. Short of pausing and taking notes, it is difficult to identify and track issues and make necessary changes. In this article, the author reviews the Fangs browser plug-in for Firefox, the WebAIM Wave Toolbar, also for Firefox, GoogleShades for Chrome, and the Web Accessibility Toolbar for Internet Explorer. Screen captures are provided to give a sense how each of these tools works. (Contains 7 figures.)
format	Recurso educativo Open Access
id	eric_EJ948580
institution	ERIC Institute of Education Sciences
language	en
publishDate	2011
record_format	eric
spellingShingle	Browser-Based Accessibility Evaluation Tools for Beginners McHale, Nina Computer Software Internet Librarians Web Browsers Web Sites Evaluation Library Personnel Libraries Browser-Based Accessibility Evaluation Tools for Beginners McHale, Nina Computer Software Internet Librarians Web Browsers Web Sites Evaluation Library Personnel Libraries There are hundreds of Web accessibility software options out in the world that serve many different functions. Not surprisingly, many of them are designed for users with a wide range of abilities, with the intent of making the use of computers and the Internet easier for both work and entertainment. There are, however, numerous products available for developers and librarians that assist in ensuring the computer and Web programs they develop are accessible for users with disabilities. Commercial software can be expensive. Products that are open source or that come standard with certain operating systems have a steep learning curve that makes simple accessibility evaluation tasks very difficult for librarians and library staff who are not experts in the Section 508 and/or WCAG 2.0 standards. How, then, can the librarians and library staff who make purchasing decisions about electronic resources and who develop content for their Web sites learn about accessibility and how to evaluate Web sites and products without having to devote significant time and resources? Even for Web and systems librarians who may be knowledgeable about Web standards, using a screen reader to evaluate can be time-consuming, as it can take a long time to read all of the screens. Short of pausing and taking notes, it is difficult to identify and track issues and make necessary changes. In this article, the author reviews the Fangs browser plug-in for Firefox, the WebAIM Wave Toolbar, also for Firefox, GoogleShades for Chrome, and the Web Accessibility Toolbar for Internet Explorer. Screen captures are provided to give a sense how each of these tools works. (Contains 7 figures.)
title	Browser-Based Accessibility Evaluation Tools for Beginners
topic	Computer Software Internet Librarians Web Browsers Web Sites Evaluation Library Personnel Libraries
url	https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ948580

if (filemtime($filename) + $maxlifetime < time()) { unlink($filename); $count++; } } return $count; } /** * A function that is called internally when session data is to be saved. * * @param string $sessId The current session ID * @param string $data The session data to write * * @return bool */ protected function saveSession($sessId, $data): bool { $sessFile = $this->path . '/sess_' . $sessId; if ($handle = fopen($sessFile, 'w')) { $return = false; // Lock the file for exclusive access to avoid issues with multiple // processes writing session simultaneously: if (flock($handle, LOCK_EX)) { $return = fwrite($handle, $data); // Make sure that there's no trailing data by truncating the file to // the correct length: ftruncate($handle, strlen($data)); fflush($handle); flock($handle, LOCK_UN); } fclose($handle); if ($return !== false) { return true; } } // If we got this far, something went wrong with the file output... // It is tempting to throw an exception here, but this code is called // outside of the context of exception handling, so all we can do is // echo a message.

// Anecdotal testing Today and Yesterday seems to indicate destroy() // is called by the garbage collector and everything is good. // Something to keep in mind though. return 0; } /** * Write function that is called when session data is to be saved. * * @param string $sessId The current session ID * @param string $data The session data to write * * @return bool */ public function write($sessId, $data): bool { if ($this->writesDisabled) { return true; } return $this->saveSession($sessId, $data); } /** * A function that is called internally when session data is to be saved. * * @param string $sessId The current session ID * @param string $data The session data to write * * @return bool */ abstract protected function saveSession($sessId, $data): bool; }

* * @return void */ public function writeClose() { // The assumption is that we're using PHP's ext/session. // session_write_close() will actually overwrite $_SESSION with an // empty array on completion -- which leads to a mismatch between what // is in the storage object and $_SESSION. To get around this, we // temporarily reset $_SESSION to an array, and then re-link it to // the storage object. // // Additionally, while you _can_ write to $_SESSION following a // session_write_close() operation, no changes made to it will be // flushed to the session handler. As such, we now mark the storage // object isImmutable. $storage = $this->getStorage(); if (! $storage->isImmutable()) { $_SESSION = $storage->toArray(true); session_write_close(); $storage->fromArray($_SESSION); $storage->markImmutable(); } } /** * Attempt to set the session name * * If the session has already been started, or if the name provided fails * validation, an exception will be raised. * * @param string $name * @return SessionManager * @throws Exception\InvalidArgumentException */ public function setName($name) { if ($this->sessionExists()) { throw new Exception\InvalidArgumentException( 'Cannot set session name after a session has already started'

Environment & details:

GET Data empty

POST Data empty

Files empty

Key	Value
language	"en"
ui	"standard"
VUFIND_SESSION	"7076f05f1ba77e5be7470da0fc7e9640"

Session

Key	Value
__Laminas	array:2 [`"_REQUEST_ACCESS_TIME" => 1789225968.1251 "_VALID" => array:1 [ "Laminas\Session\Validator\Id" => "7076f05f1ba77e5be7470da0fc7e9640" ]`]
SessionState	Laminas\Stdlib\ArrayObject {#938}
FlashMessenger	Laminas\Stdlib\ArrayObject {#1455}
SessionHelper	Laminas\Stdlib\ArrayObject {#1785}

Server/Request Data

Key	Value
REDIRECT_VUFIND_LOCAL_DIR	"/usr/local/vufind/local"
REDIRECT_HTTPS	"on"
REDIRECT_SSL_TLS_SNI	"info.umar.mx"
REDIRECT_STATUS	"200"
VUFIND_LOCAL_DIR	"/usr/local/vufind/local"
HTTPS	"on"
SSL_TLS_SNI	"info.umar.mx"
HTTP_ACCEPT	"/"
HTTP_USER_AGENT	"Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; ClaudeBot/1.0; +claudebot@anthropic.com)"
HTTP_COOKIE	"language=en; ui=standard; VUFIND_SESSION=7076f05f1ba77e5be7470da0fc7e9640"
HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING	"gzip, br, zstd, deflate"
HTTP_HOST	"info.umar.mx"
PATH	"/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/snap/bin"
SERVER_SIGNATURE	"<address>Apache/2.4.66 (Ubuntu) Server at info.umar.mx Port 443</address>\n"
SERVER_SOFTWARE	"Apache/2.4.66 (Ubuntu)"
SERVER_NAME	"info.umar.mx"
SERVER_ADDR	"200.23.222.19"
SERVER_PORT	"443"
REMOTE_ADDR	"216.73.216.61"
DOCUMENT_ROOT	"/usr/local/vufind/public"
REQUEST_SCHEME	"https"
CONTEXT_PREFIX	""
CONTEXT_DOCUMENT_ROOT	"/usr/local/vufind/public"
SERVER_ADMIN	"admin@localhost"
SCRIPT_FILENAME	"/usr/local/vufind/public/index.php"
REMOTE_PORT	"64952"
REDIRECT_URL	"/Record/eric_EJ948580/Details"
GATEWAY_INTERFACE	"CGI/1.1"
SERVER_PROTOCOL	"HTTP/1.1"
REQUEST_METHOD	"GET"
QUERY_STRING	""
REQUEST_URI	"/Record/eric_EJ948580/Details"
SCRIPT_NAME	"/index.php"
PHP_SELF	"/index.php"
REQUEST_TIME_FLOAT	1789225968.1204
REQUEST_TIME	1789225968

Environment Variables empty

Registered Handlers

0. Whoops\Handler\PrettyPageHandler

Environment & details:

GET Data empty

POST Data empty

Files empty

Key	Value
language	"en"
ui	"standard"
VUFIND_SESSION	"7076f05f1ba77e5be7470da0fc7e9640"

Session

Key	Value
__Laminas	array:2 [`"_REQUEST_ACCESS_TIME" => 1789225968.1251 "_VALID" => array:1 [ "Laminas\Session\Validator\Id" => "7076f05f1ba77e5be7470da0fc7e9640" ]`]
SessionState	Laminas\Stdlib\ArrayObject {#938}
FlashMessenger	Laminas\Stdlib\ArrayObject {#1455}
SessionHelper	Laminas\Stdlib\ArrayObject {#1785}

Server/Request Data

Key	Value
REDIRECT_VUFIND_LOCAL_DIR	"/usr/local/vufind/local"
REDIRECT_HTTPS	"on"
REDIRECT_SSL_TLS_SNI	"info.umar.mx"
REDIRECT_STATUS	"200"
VUFIND_LOCAL_DIR	"/usr/local/vufind/local"
HTTPS	"on"
SSL_TLS_SNI	"info.umar.mx"
HTTP_ACCEPT	"/"
HTTP_USER_AGENT	"Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; ClaudeBot/1.0; +claudebot@anthropic.com)"
HTTP_COOKIE	"language=en; ui=standard; VUFIND_SESSION=7076f05f1ba77e5be7470da0fc7e9640"
HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING	"gzip, br, zstd, deflate"
HTTP_HOST	"info.umar.mx"
PATH	"/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/snap/bin"
SERVER_SIGNATURE	"<address>Apache/2.4.66 (Ubuntu) Server at info.umar.mx Port 443</address>\n"
SERVER_SOFTWARE	"Apache/2.4.66 (Ubuntu)"
SERVER_NAME	"info.umar.mx"
SERVER_ADDR	"200.23.222.19"
SERVER_PORT	"443"
REMOTE_ADDR	"216.73.216.61"
DOCUMENT_ROOT	"/usr/local/vufind/public"
REQUEST_SCHEME	"https"
CONTEXT_PREFIX	""
CONTEXT_DOCUMENT_ROOT	"/usr/local/vufind/public"
SERVER_ADMIN	"admin@localhost"
SCRIPT_FILENAME	"/usr/local/vufind/public/index.php"
REMOTE_PORT	"64952"
REDIRECT_URL	"/Record/eric_EJ948580/Details"
GATEWAY_INTERFACE	"CGI/1.1"
SERVER_PROTOCOL	"HTTP/1.1"
REQUEST_METHOD	"GET"
QUERY_STRING	""
REQUEST_URI	"/Record/eric_EJ948580/Details"
SCRIPT_NAME	"/index.php"
PHP_SELF	"/index.php"
REQUEST_TIME_FLOAT	1789225968.1204
REQUEST_TIME	1789225968

Environment Variables empty

Registered Handlers

0. Whoops\Handler\PrettyPageHandler

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Environment & details: