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Technical Web Site Evaluation for Non-Technical People

This page will take you step by step through the process of evaluating a web site for technical excellence. The tools we're going to show you provide a wealth of information for the advanced user and are intended to provide developers with a way of testing and amending their work to adhere to the relevant guidelines. Please don't be daunted by the jargon on these sites, simply follow the instructions here and you will be guided to the relevant parts of the sites that will show you whether or not the web pages you are testing comply with the various standards.

Coding Standards

 

Firstly let's look to see if the site has been coded using standards.

1. Go to the WWW Council's validation web site (opens in a new window)

2. Type the web design company's web address in to the box provided

3. Click the 'Validate' button.

If the web site has been coded adhering to standards, you should see the following section at the top of the resulting web page:-

Alternatively, if the page does not adhere to the WWW Councils standards, you will not see this image at the top, if you scroll down the resulting web page, you will find another image in red telling you that the site is not valid as in the following example.

Be aware that the wording may differ slightly from site to site, but the jist is the same, valid or not. If the web site design company's own website does not contain valid code, then you can pretty much guarantee yours won't either! Our advice is to steer clear.

Disabled Access

Ok, hopefully that wasn't too taxing, now we'll look to see if the site complies with the regulations that deal with disabled access.

First it should be noted that there is not a single automated tool that will tell for certain whether or not a site is truly accessible. This is because there are a number of requirements that can only be checked by a human, however, the tools available are fairly sophisticated and should provide, at the very least, and indication as to whether a web site design company has paid any attention to the Disability Discrimination Act (UK) or Section 508 (US).

There are many tools available, the one we're using is called Hermish, we've selected this tool for its refreshingly non-technical approach.

1. Go to the Hermish web site (opens in a new window)

2. Enter the web site address under scrutiny into the box provided

3. Tick all of the boxes (Priority 1 to 3 and Section 508).

4. Click 'Check Page'.

The results page is now split into 3 sections based on the boxes you ticked, if the page has passed the automatic validation you will see one of the following images:-

You will also see a whole raft of warning checkpoints under each section, these are points that require a technically savvy human eye to verify. It is almost impossible to pass the automated tests by accident, so it is fair to say that if some or all of the above images are present, the web developer is at least familiar with accessiblity standards.

You may be wondering what the difference between the the four levels are so there is a brief explaination below:-

A, AA and AAA

These are levels of disabled access.

A: This is the absolute minimum requirement. If the page is is not at least A approved, one or more groups of disabled users will find it impossible to access information from the web page.

AA: All pages should achieve this level, otherwise one or more groups of users will have trouble accessing and reading the web pages.

AAA: This is the highest level, this will allow full access to any user groups.

Section 508

508 is a US standard. It sets a fairly basic standard for accessibility but achieving this standard shows that the developer has some idea and understanding of accessibility.

These methods provide you with an idea of a design companies ability to make a web site accessible. The 508 rating is extremely easy to achieve and as such we recommend this as an absolute minimum. The AAA rating on the other hand requires a deep knowledge and understanding of the issues facing disabled people in relation to the Internet. Just because a web site hasn't acheived the full AAA rating, it does not necessarily mean that the site is totally inaccessible, therefore use this method as a guide.

It should be noted that many web site designers in the UK are (believe it or not) completely oblivious to the idea of web standards, the law and accessibility issues. Since failure to comply with these standards is your responsibility, our advice is if you are unsure about a web design company's ability to deliver, steer well clear! Better safe than sorry.

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