If you haven't already checked out our Digital Accessibility Training content, please do so when you have the chance! These resources will provide some context for the digital accessibility evaluation tools listed below.
Digital Accessibility Checklists
How do you find the right digital accessibility checklist to use during the design phase? The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) maintains a How To Meet WCAG (Quick Reference) guide to support you in validating the accessibility of your digital resources.
This guide can be immediately helpful for developers but may be overwhelming for content creators who have less experience with digital design. That being the case, Web Accessibility in Mind (WebAIM), Deque University, and Level Access have each developed their own, more digestible resources to support WCAG 2 compliance:
Automated Accessibility Evaluation Tools
There are a number of free automated evaluation tools available online. Siteimprove is an automated quality assurance tool to which all pdx.edu content managers may request access via the Siteimprove Access Request form. In addition to measuring general quality assurance by detecting things like misspellings and broken links, Siteimprove will also test for common accessibility issues like missing alternate text or heading structure. The following are some additional, automated accessibility evaluation tools that may be helpful to you:
Please note that automated evaluation tools will only help you to locate and repair the most obvious accessibility issues. To ensure WCAG 2 compliance, you must evaluate digital resources manually.
Manual Testing With Adaptive Technology
At minimum, digital resources should be manually tested for keyboard navigability and the accessibility of images, headings, links, media, and color. Optimally, screen reading software can be used to determine whether all functions can be accessed equitably via keyboard. The following are some resources to help you get started:
Niklas Petersson, a native screen reader user from Miles Access Skills Training, created the following two, short videos to demonstrate how someone who uses screen reading software might access images:
Evaluating Content for Accessibility: Screenshots (Part 1) provides an example of a screenshot that has been incorporated in a webpage in a way that is accessible via screen reading software.
Evaluating Content for Accessibility: Screenshots (Part 2) offers an example that is far less useful.
Color Contrast Evaluation Tools
In order to use a color contrast evaluation tool, you will need the hex or RGB key for the background and foreground colors you plan to use. If you are unable to determine this information easily within your content authoring platform, you may use a tool like the ColorZilla Chrome Extension.
Once you've determined the hex or RGB keys, you can use any of the following color contrast ratio checkers to evaluate contrast between background and foreground colors. WCAG 2 guidelines recommend at least a 4.5:1 contrast ratio. All of these color contrast checkers will indicate to you whether or not a specific color combination complies with WCAG 2 Levels A and AA success criteria, at or below size 18 point font.
If faculty or staff have any additional questions regarding digital accessibility for public-facing digital resources at PSU, please email help-accessibility@pdx.edu or submit a Digital Accessibility Support ticket.