JavaScript Accessibility Testing Helper
Overview
Basic website accessibility is extremely easy to implement yet usually overlooked. Why is that? Because most of us who build websites don’t need it and, let’s be honest, accessibility testing is a pain. Heck, any testing is a pain.
That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be implemented, though. And one way to make it easier to implement is to make it obvious. If you’re using a screen reader and the form fields don’t have appropriate labels, you’ll notice right away. But most of us don’t use screen readers.
Luckily, I’ve got a solution for that: the JavaScript Accessibility Testing Helper (JATH). JATH is a simple JavaScript and CSS file which you can drop into your template so they appear across the site. When a page loads, JATH checks it for common accessibility errors and puts a report up in the top-right corner. Additionally, if there are any errors, JATH highlights them on the page.
Demo
You can view a demo of JATH online. It includes a sample page with accessibility errors and JATH running on that page.
Why JATH?
JATH isn’t designed to be a complete accessibility testing suite. There are much better sites to do that. Rather, it’s designed to make accessibility errors immediately obvious so you can correct them. There are toolbars and extensions for browsers that can do this, of course. JATH’s advantage is that it will appear in any browser for every developer because it’s integrated into the page.
Requirements
jQuery: version 1.4 or later
Code
The code for JATH can be found on Google Code at code.google.com/p/jath/.
Documentation
The documentation for JATH is in the Google Code wiki at http://code.google.com/p/jath/wiki/Documentation.
Issues
Something not working right? The issues and defects for JATH are kept on Google Code at code.google.com/p/jath/issues/list.
License
Copyright 2011 James Frank
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the “Software”), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
