Testing for Accessibility

You can run reports on pages within your sites to determine how well they stack up in terms of compliance with accessibility standards.

1.	Open access_check.html from the Lesson_15_Testing folder. Choose Site > Reports. The Reports dialog box opens.
2.	Select Current Document from the Report on menu. Click to check the Accessibility box in the HTML Reports section. Leave all other options unchecked and click the Run button. A list of results displays in the Site Reports tab of the Results panel. Each item indicates the filename of the document in which it was foundwhich in this case is the current document, access_check.htmlalong with the line number where the item can be found in the code and a brief description of the item.
3.	Select the fifth item in the list, which begins with Color is not essential. Click the More Info icon on the left side of the Results window. A more detailed description appears in the Reference panel, located in the Results panel. This description gives you specifics about the particular accessibility rule in question, as well as suggestions about methods that can make your pages more accessible. Note Color, brightness, and contrast are important elements to consider when building your Website. Monitor displays often vary dramatically; typically, Windows screens tend to be considerably darker than Macintosh screens. You can test your pages by using different settings to calibrate your monitor. Using a variety of monitors to test your page is also helpful. Dreamweaver provides you with a number of books in the Reference panel through which you can learn more about the code used to create Web pages. The UsableNet Accessibility Reference provides you with a quick way to get a thorough explanation of the many standards required by Section 508, which you learned about in Lesson 5. Tip As with all panels, you can resize the Reference panel. Enlarging it might help you to read the content. When the panel is reduced, it can be hard to read the information it contains.
4.	Verify that UsableNet Accessibility Reference is selected on the Book drop-down menu at the top of the Reference panel. From the Rule menu on the Reference panel, choose Spacer IMG with Valid ALT. The description of the selected accessibility standard appears in the Reference panel. Displayed in green just above the text description is the specific location of this accessibility standard in Section 508. The description gives you information about the necessity of using the proper alternative text for all spacer and decorative (non-essential) images used. You learned to specify the alternative attribute of images in Lesson 5; in the same lesson you used the <empty> option available in the Alt menu on the Property inspector for spacer images and other similar images that serve only a graphical, aesthetic purposethat is, they do not convey vital information to the visitor.
5.	Close (Macintosh) or collapse (Windows) the Results panel and the access_check.html file.

The Reference panel will be particularly helpful for developing accessible Websites after you start working directly in the code, as you will learn in Lesson 16.