Web Accessibility Testing

The purpose of this lab is to learn how to validate the web accessibility of websites using the freely available online tools

After completing this lab, students will be able to evaluate websites for web accessibility. They will have a good insight about:

• W3C web accessibility guidelines
• Different validation tools for web accessibility

Introduction

Accessibility is an important aspect which is often ignored while designing system interfaces. Users with disabilities are often marginalized due to such kind of design. Web accessibility is specifically related to websites and W3C has developed the detailed guidelines for it. Please visit the following link to get brief introduction about the web accessibility.

https://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/accessibility.php

Activity 1

You task is to evaluate web accessibility of CIIT’s website (Islamabad Campus) using the online validator “Unicorn” (https://validator.w3.org/unicorn/). Prepare the report containing the problems, guidelines violated, and the number of errors related to accessibility.

Home Activities

The student should work in a group of three to evaluate the educational website (of different Pakistani universities), assigned by the lab instructor, based on W3C accessibility criteria. Educational website contents may be broadly categorized as follows:

• Basic information/introduction about the institute
• Information for the prospective students
• Information for the existing students
• Information about different departments/faculty members
• Information about different available jobs
• Information about research publications and projects

You must evaluate at least two pages for each category (described above).

Assignment Deliverables

Students need to submit a report containing the following:

• The information about the page URL
• The problems related to accessibility
• The relevant screenshots
• The guidelines(s) violated
• The possible solution