En How do automated accessibility checkers compare? se muestra una comparativa de herramientas de evaluación de la accesibilidad web.
Según esta comparativa, las mejores herramientas son SortSite, Tenon, AChecker, WAVE y aXe. Esta comparativa está actualizada al 13 de abril de 2018.
Automated accessibility testing tools, powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and code-scanning technology, can be an important part of an accessibility testing plan — but, they must remain just a part. Automated testing on its own should not replace manual testing by an accessibility expert and should not be used as the only way to show compliance.Y avisa del peligro del texto alternativo generado de forma automática mediante inteligencia artificial:
As technology advances, there are even image-recognition programs that can with some accuracy guess what an image depicts and generate alt text. On one hand, it's incredible that this technology exists. On the other, it presents an additional layer of review required by human beings. The real purpose of an image in the context of a web page, the real feeling somebody is supposed to be exposed to, the real information conveyed by an image can't be decided by a machine — at least not yet.
Automation really shines here. It can repeatedly and tirelessly pour over these details with perfect memory, at a rate far faster than any human is capable of.
However…
Automated accessibility tests aren’t a turnkey solution, nor are they a silver bullet. There are some limitations to keep in mind when using them.
Asqatasun is the leading opensource software for web accessibility (#a11y) since 2007. Built with reliability in mind, it also addresses SEO concerns, and is extensible to any other domain.
Asqatasun provides a huge level of automation and can be included in Continuous Integration thanks to its Jenkins Plugin.
It should be universally understood that automated testing tools cannot offer complete test coverage for all possible accessibility issues on the web. Therefore it stands to reason that if you cannot automatically find all your site’s accessibility issues, you certainly cannot automatically fix all of them, either. This is extraordinarily simple logic. In fact, automatically fixing issues is even less likely to be successful than finding them. This fact is demonstrated within Mallet. While Mallet is extremely good at finding & fixing some issues, it is still limited to around 2-dozen types of ‘fixes’ that work on their own without any configuration. The remainder of Mallet’s fixes require some level of configuration. To put this into perspective, Tenon.io has approximately 200 accessibility tests that look for around 2500 different failure conditions. In other words, we can easily find at least 10x as many issues as we can reliably fix, because fixing the issues requires far more knowledge about the user interface than an automated tool has.Y también dice:
As always, it is important to remind the reader that there are limits to what can be discovered with automatic testing. It stands to reason that if you cannot automatically test for something you definitely cannot fix it, either.
- Captions/ transcripts for audio-only content or audio content in videos.
- Audio description for video content
- Content that relies on sensory characteristics to understand
- Audio control
- Keyboard trap
- Pause, Stop, Hide
- Error prevention and error handling
- Effective focus management
The above is only a subset of the many things in web accessibility that cannot be accurately tested via automated means. Many of them are hugely impactful for people with disabilities.
- Reading level
Can automated web accessibility programs accurately determine ADA and 508 compliance? According to the United States Access Board the answer is, NO. In fact, the Board advised, in an online training tool from May 2016, 50% of errors are likely to be overlooked with an automatic system. The Access Board further states that an automated tool should be used in web development, but not as a reliable monitoring system.
The Quail Accessibility Information Library is an open-source, MIT-licensed suite of tests that assess web page structure and content. The library is currently developed against WCAG and 508, but additional guidelines may be mapped to tests using a tagging system.
Quail was started by Kevin Miller in 2009 as a PHP library specifically targeted at checking content accessibility within a CMS. Shortly after announcing Quail, he also developed the Accessible Content module for Drupal, which has been used in several government and higher education websites to give content authors feedback. On the train from Drupalcon Denver in March of 2012, Kevin re-wrote Quail as a jQuery plugin to help expand possible integrations to more projects. Quail continues to evolve through volunteer contribution and the leadership of Kevin.
