Is Your Web Content Accessible? - Tools of the Trade
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Here are several tools that will check the accessibility of your web page as it relates to SEO:
The Functional Accessibility Evaluator gives a summarized analysis and a detailed page report for any specified web page. The tool analyzes the page based on:
Wave let's you type in the URL of a page you want to check; it will display a graphical representation with the issues marked where they are found on the page. Just hover your mouse over the icons and indicators to reveal the specific issue.
Lynx Viewer provides a text-only version of a specified web page. You can then see whether your page has enough content when the scripts and style sheets are disabled. However, the one caveat is that you must be the developer of the page you wish to view. Check their how-to page for more information.
The Image Analyzer checks the width, height, alt, and longdesc attributes of every image on a web page to make sure there are no accessibility issues.
The Durham University website has a number of useful web accessibility tools. Alt Text Checker focuses only on the alt attribute for each image on a web page. It juxtaposes a text version of the image with the actual image so you can see its context in plain text. The Link Context Checker shows all links out of context. You should be able to identify the link target just by reading the link text.
Firefox has a couple of useful web accessibility extensions as well. The Mozilla/Firefox Accessibility extension is a handy toolbar that helps developers check their structural and styling markup as well as headings, titles, frames, and many of the other elements we have discussed so far. Web Developer FireFox extension lets you disable scripts and styles, display alt attributes and form details, and provides other useful features. Fangs will show you how your web page looks when rendered by a screen reader. It also provides good header and link analysis.
In conclusion, there are many other tools out there, so please don't rely solely on the ones mentioned in this article. Hopefully you've gained a better appreciation of web accessibility, even if your main goal is to improve your search rankings.
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