Accessibility Tools

No one person can determine if something is completely accessible just by looking at it.  That's why the University Marketing Web Development team uses a number of tools, including web browser plugins, to measure accessibility, quality assurance, and other key indicators.

Screen readers

Screen readers are software programs that allow individuals with vision impairments (blindness, low-vision, color blindness, etc) to navigate their devices as well as the web through the use of voice or braille output. User typically navigate using keyboard shortcuts and commands, rather than a mouse. Some of the most common screen readers include:

• Voiceover
• Microsoft Narrator
• JAWS (Job Access with Speech)
• NVDA (NonVisual Desktop Access)

Accessibility checkers/evaluators

How does your content stand up to the WCAG guidelines?  Because accessibility is not only for websites, items like Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, Powerpoint presentations, and even emails should be checked to verify that your users are able to read and/or edit the content. Tools like the Adobe Accessibility Checker and Microsoft Accessibility Checker can check documents to determine how accessible they are, and tell you what changes you may need to make.  Plugins like SiteImprove and WAVE do the same for webpage.  These apps keep track of the guidelines so you don't have to - you just need to fix any errors they find.

SEO (Search engine optimization) and metadata information

SEO Meta in 1-Click is a browser extension that gives SEO specialists, developers, and marketers an instant overview of on-page SEO elements. Although most UMassD users will likely use this extension to display front-end information such as meta titles and descriptions, heading structure, link totals and image alt text, it can also quickly displays more in-depth information for developers such as structured data (JSON-LD).  This information makes it easy for users to spot optimization and accessibility issues without having to review the source code manually.

Apple/Mac

Apple devices have a number of accessibility tools and settings built into their devices.  MacOS provides features categorized into a few areas:

• Vision: users can customize their on-screen motion as well as enlarge text and the pointer, and zoom in on the screen.
• Hearing: users can customize captions, make real-time text (RTT) calls and access live captions for audio.
• Motor: Apple users can navigate their device(s) in a variety of ways. In addition to a mouse or trackpad, users have the option of using spoken commands, keyboard navigation, and onscreen keyboards. Settings can be customized for certain gestures as well.
• Speech: Besides VoiceOver, users can have written content spoken out loud, and on certain devices, the voices can be customized.

Apple devices also have several developer tools (such as Accessibility Inspector and Accessibility Verifier) that are used to help debug apps during development.

More info

Read more about some of the tools available to make your content accessible