Digital Accessibility and Universal Design for Learning: Evaluating Accessibility

WAVE Automated Accessibility Checker

Some aspects of accessibility inherently have to be checked manually (by a human being), such as whether or not a description of a picture is accurate and useful.  Automated checkers cannot be entirely accurate but are very helpful. They can help identify accessibility features (or lack of them) that screen readers can navigate to and identify, such as:

• headings
• lists
• ARIA landmarks
• skip navigation
• alt text (descriptions of pictures, graphs, diagrams, etc.)
• tables, which should have table headers
• forms, which should have labels

To evaluate proxied resources, you will need to download the WAVE toolbar

Online Video Accessibility (WCAG 2.0 level AA):

• synced captioning for users who are deaf or hard of hearing
• audio description of visual elements for users who have visual disabilities
• transcripts for users who are deafblind.  Deafblind individuals may use a screen reader with a refreshable Braille display to read text.  Transcripts may be useful for others as well.

Audio Description

Sample clip of Frozen trailer with audiodescription

When creating your own screen casts or videos, you can add verbal description of significant visual content.  This is likely unnecessary for talking head videos.  For screen shots of navigating videos, consider mentioning elements to which screen reader users can navigate, such as search boxes, particular link text, etc.  Jaws screen reader keystrokes 

Audio described videos are not yet widely commercially available.  Following are some sources if you are looking for audio described videos

• Blind Mice Movie Vault Audio Described Movies Free downloads of popular audio described movies.  Requires free registration.
• List of movies available for sale with audio description. 
  • Media Access Group at WGBH
  • The Audio Description Project an initiative of the American Council of the Blind