Digital Access Resources

  • Accessibility Basics | Usability.gov
    Accessibility focuses on how a disabled person accesses or benefits from a site, system or application. Accessibility is an important part of the designing your site and should be considered throughout the development process. Section 508 is the governing principle and it requires that all government information be accessible to disabled users.
  • 10 Accessibility Checks in 10 minutes | Maxability
    Quite often I receive requests to check the accessibility of a web page and say if it is accessible or not. In most of the cases the request is to identify high level accessibility issues to include in a business presentation. Being a screen reader user I can read through the page and identify few accessibility problems within 15 to 20 minutes. I thought of putting together 10 check points that can be checked by any consultant in 10 minutes and identify if the page is accessible on a high level.
  • Section508.gov
    This website was intended to be a place for a variety of stakeholders to easily find guidance, tools, and resources for Section 508 procurements with the ultimate goal of ensuring equal participation for people with disabilities by improving Information and Communication Technology (ICT) accessibility.
  • WebAIM: Web Accessibility In Mind
    WebAIM has provided comprehensive web accessibility solutions since 1999. These years of experience have made WebAIM one of the leading providers of web accessibility expertise internationally. 
  • What is plain language? – Plain Language Association International (PLAIN)
    A communication is in plain language if the language, structure, and design are so clear that the intended audience can easily find what they need, understand what they find, and use that information. Source: International Plain Language Working Group
  • World Wide Access: Accessible Web Design: DO-IT Video
    This video presentation shows how to make web pages accessible to people with disabilities. It is particularly useful for self-instruction or group training for people who design and support websites and/or teach web design classes.
  • Writing Good Link Descriptions – Disability Resource Center
    Providing good wording for the text in a link can be a challenge. We all want to strive to be as concise as possible, but sometimes we sacrifice meaning in the process. If we are to keep those visitors who are using screen readers coming back to our site, we need to avoid certain pitfalls of link lingo. 

Evaluation and Accessibility Tools

  • AMARA
    Amara is home to an award winning subtitle editor that makes it easy to caption and translate video. Amara also hosts volunteer localization & accessibility communities, and offers professional tools and services for subtitles.
  • Easy YouTube caption creator | Accessify
    The Easy YouTube caption creator is designed to make it very simple to create a caption text file (.sub format) that you can then add to YouTube video files that you have uploaded. This is something of a one-trick pony; what it creates is not rocket science, it’s just designed to make it a little easier (and hopefully will encourage you to caption more videos).
  • Fangs Screen Reader Emulator | Add-ons for Firefox
    Fangs renders a text version of a web page similar to how a screen reader would read it. The ambition is to help developers understand how an assistive device would present a website and thereby increase chances of finding accessibility issues early.
  • Textise – the Text-Only Internet Tool
    Textise is a new way of looking at the Web. It’s an internet tool that removes everything from a web page except for its text. In practice, this means that images, forms, scripts, pretty fonts, they all go, leaving plain text.
  • WAVE – Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool
    WAVE is a free web accessibility evaluation tool provided by WebAIM. It is used to aid humans in the web accessibility evaluation process. Rather than providing a complex technical report, WAVE shows the original web page with embedded icons and indicator