Scanning Pages and Sites for 508 Violations

Integrating accessibility aspects into your web pages as you build them is obviously the most efficient way to construct new Section 508 compliant sites. But how do you bring legacy pages into compliance? Dreamweaver provides a useful tool for checking individual pages or entire sites against the Section 508 guidelines. By running the Accessibility report, you not only can validate legacy pages, but you also can make sure you haven't overlooked any requirements in new pages.

To check a page or pages for accessibility compliance, do this:

1. Choose Window > Results > Site Reports, and then select Reports (the green arrow).

   The Reports dialog box, as shown in Figure 2.8, is displayed.

   Figure 2.8. Run an accessibility report for the current document, the whole site, selected individual files, or a selected folder.

   

2. From the Reports dialog box, check the Accessibility option.

3. Choose the scope of the report from the Report On drop-down list.

4. To alter or verify the current settings, choose Report Settings (see Figure 2.9).

   Figure 2.9. Restrict the Accessibility report by deselecting unneeded rules.

   

   By default, all of the possible guidelinesfrom Section 508 and W3C/WAI Accessibilityare enabled. Expand the regulation by clicking on its plus sign to see any of the specific guidelines. If you don't want to check for a particular rule, clear that rule's check box. To include a list of items that were properly handled, select the Passed Test option.

5. From the Reports dialog box, select Run.

As Dreamweaver inspects each page requested , suspected problems found are listed in the Results panel. Blatant errors are noted with a red X, whereas issues that require a closer look are flagged with a question mark. If you opted to show passed tests, a check mark appears next to those items.

As with all Dreamweaver reports, the accessibility report directs you to the exact code in question. Simply double-click the entry to open the document (if necessary) and go directly to the line of code that contains the problem.

After the report has been run, you can save the results in an XML format by choosing the Save icon. You can then import the XML data into a data source or combine it with an XSL document to produce a formatted report.