Introduction

Validating that your HTML code adheres to industry standards, is becoming increasingly important. Both Dreamweaver 8 and Visual Studio 2005 provide tools to assist validating that code complies with accessibility standards. No computer-based tool is perfect in being able to access what will or won’t be usable by an impaired person. But these tools give a good starting point and offer suggestions to achieve the best possible results.

Dreamweaver Section

Using the accessibility features from site reports, you can see what portions of your HTML code do not adhere to the section 508 and WCAG standards. To get started, reference the site menu, and then reports. From here select the accessibility checkbox under HTML reports. This lists the places where the system senses that the page fails accessibility standards as well as general recommendation to follow when creating your page. Because all the of the manual check list items are always included, this can be a sizable report.

Visual Studio 2005 Section

In Microsoft Visual Studio 2005, you can check an individual page for compliance with accessibility standards from the tools menu, check accessibility. Options include testing for conformance to the Web content accessibility guidelines 1.0, priorities one and two, also known as WCAG, and the section 508 accessibility guidelines. The resulting list by default, shows both errors and warnings, but can also include suggestions from the manual checklist. By default, the same kind of accessibility check is performed each time the project is built. This is configurable from the properties page of the solution. On the context menu of the solution, referencing properties, the accessibility option shows the tests that will be performed each time the solution is built.

Conclusion

This has been a comparison of tools to check accessibility in Dreamweaver 8 and Visual Studio 2005.