Live accessibility Checker

Question

I am wondering if anyone knows of any program / tool / or addon that offers a feature like the Live Accessibility Checker in Microsoft Office Word for html coding.

I think it would be great to be able to offer our developers something like this that flags accessibility errors as they are coding them.

Answer 1

There are many tools for checking conformance with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) of published websites such as WAVE and Total Validator. A full list is maintained on the W3 website: http://www.w3.org/WAI/RC/tools/complete

However it doesn't appear there are any for checking within an IDE as you're coding, which is what you're looking for. The nearest would be if you're developing something like PHP / classic ASP where changes can be constantly published to a test website and a check subsequently performed with one of these external tools.

In general currently I think that's the best option to consider, including into any build scripts a call to an external tool for WCAG check and potentially parsing the output for number of non-compliances. It doesn't meet the 'live' check, but probably about the next best.

EDIT - one possible tool that may fit the bill (for users of Eclipse IDEs) : http://www.eclipse.org/actf/

The ACTF componentry and the utilities will be integrated into a single tooling environment on top of the Eclipse framework. The framework components will function cooperatively with each other and with other Eclipse projects to provide a comprehensive development environment for creating accessible applications and content.

Answer 2

I haven't worked with any IDE that has had an on the fly accessibility checker while you code, but I use http://wave.webaim.org/ sometimes.