Web Accessibility services and resources for producing web sites accessible to people with special needs.
Section 508 refers to the section of United States federal law that governs (among other things) accessibility of web sites provided by federal agencies and vendors supplying services to those agencies. This article describes practices, techniques and tools for testing for Section 508 compliance by developers and by Quality Assurance engineers. It assumes little to no prior knowledge of accessibility, but a knowledge of web sites and web site testing techniques.
Most of the standards are subjective. The testing tools on the market are limited in their ability to do automated testing or validation. The best they can do is point out areas that are subjective and advise the tester what to look for. This requires a lot of accessibility background knowledge for the tester.
There are four parts of Section 508 that apply to web sites and web site applications. §1194.21 Software Applications and Operating Systems, §1194.22 Web-Based Intranet and Internet Information and Applications, Subpart C Functional Performance Criteria and Subpart D Information, Documentation and Support . Section 1194.21 Software Applications and Operating Systems applies to scripts, applets and specialized functions of a web site. This is a complex area that will be addressed in a future series. Subpart C regulates the modes of operation and support for assistive technology. Subpart D requires that the documentation and support for the web site or application be provided in formats and communication methods that meet the special needs of users at no extra charge.
When most accessibility experts discuss Section 508, they are referring to §1194.22 Web-Based Intranet and Internet Information and Applications. That will be the focus of this series. We will be looking at each of the individual standards and the techniques and tools used to test them.
Even though this tutorial is oriented for QA Engineers, there will be some discussion of HTML code, as many of the reports and Accessibility Testing tools refer to the specific HTML coding. HTML uses tags enclosed in <> symbols to invisibly mark how the test and images should be handled by the browsers -- including screen readers, like JAWS. The tags also have attributes, which are the options for the tag. The attributes give more control over the tag. Most accessibility coding happens in the tag attributes. For this tutorial, the tags are placed in the angle brackets <IMG>, and the attributes are referred to in UPPERCASE.