22.7 Checking Your Web Site’s Accessibility with WebXACT

Section 508 is the federal law that requires federal agencies to ensure that people with disabilities can access their information technology resources. From a web perspective, the requirements are based on the Web Accessibility Initiative guidelines developed by the W3C. If you are doing work for the federal government or for most states, the sites you are developing will have to be Section 508–compliant. While this is only law for federal agencies, more and more companies are striving to ensure that their sites are compliant.

Watchfire’s WebXACT is a free online service that can inspect your site and provide reports on validation, accessibility, and privacy.

WebXACT at a Glance

Tool

WebXACT

Version covered

0.7.2

Home page

http://webxact.watchfire.com

Power Tools page

http://www.windevpowertools.com/tools/118

Summary

Free online service primarily focused on accessibility. Also provides validation and privacy summaries.

License type

Freeware

Online resources

Online help

Related tools in this book

W3C Markup Validation Service, HTML Tidy

Getting Started

To use WebXACT, simply point your browser to http://webxact.watchfire.com, enter a valid URL, and press Go!

Using WebXACT

WebXACT’s main page is shown in Figure 22-29.

The WebXACT validation interface

Figure 22-29. The WebXACT validation ...

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