Spun off from discussion of link underlining at https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=268426#c4
I aimed to perform accessibility checks on two pages in the FreeBSD documentation portal. Whilst preparing to use tools that were familiar to me, I decided to see what else might be useful.
Google found an article that was originally published in 2011:
Some of the links are outdated. An end result:
- Accessibility Checker – ADA & WCAG Compliance (Free Scan) – https://www.accessibilitychecker.org/
- AChecker – Web Accessibility Checker for WCAG 2.0 AODA Compliance Monitoring – https://achecker.achecks.ca/checker/index.php
- ARC Toolkit – Page-Level Testing – TPGi – https://www.tpgi.com/arc-platform/arc-toolkit/ – no extension for Firefox, so I added the extension to Chromium
- FAE : Functional Accessibility Evaluator 2.3 – https://fae.disability.illinois.edu/anonymous/
- MagentaA11y – accessibility checklist – https://www.magentaa11y.com/
- Sa11y – https://sa11y.netlify.app/ – I added the bookmarklet to Firefox
- TAW | Web accessibility and W3C standardization services – https://www.tawdis.net/
- WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools – https://wave.webaim.org/ – I added the extension to Firefox.
Something led me to:
- AInspector for Firefox – WCAG 2.0 evaluation of a web page – https://ainspector.disability.illinois.edu/
– nice use of the sidebar.
More than one hundred and sixty tools here:
- Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools List – https://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/tools/
Guidelines for Visualizing Links (2004-05-09).
Link Accessibility No-Nos That May Surprise You - AT3 Center (2019-07-24).
Required Web Content and Links – Digital.gov (2022-11-09). Whilst this page has no contrast error, according to https://wave.webaim.org/report#/https://digital.gov/resources/required-web-content-and-links/, an important part of the page – a boxed Note – is unnecessarily difficult to read. It appears to lack contrast, maybe due to chosen fonts.
From WebAIM: Links and Hypertext - Link Text and Appearance, with regard to underlining:
WCAG 2.0 has 2 additional requirements for body text links that are not underlined by default:
- The link text must have a 3:1 contrast ratio from the surrounding non-link text.
- The link must present a "non-color designator" (typically the introduction of the underline) on both mouse hover and keyboard focus.
These two requirements help ensure that all users can differentiate links from non-link text, even if they have low vision, color deficiency, or have overridden page colors.
Yale University's Links | Usability & Web Accessibility offers a little more detail, under Non-Color Indicators.