acop - enforcing accessibility for web pages

Acop

Description

acop is a command line utility for verifying accessibility in web pages

With acop, you can specify a url you want to test for accessibility and acop would run through a checklist of accessibility concerns and return any issues found

Installation

gem install acop

Synopsis

Access the command line help

acop --help

Specify the url you want accessibility tested

acop -u http://www.google.com

Specify the urls to be tested in a file (new line separated)

acop -f ./list_of_urls.txt

Scaffold rspec tests for a particular url or list of urls in a file. The gem will create a spec directory(if none exists) from where it is run. In addition it will create a spec file with a describe block for a particular url or list of urls. If the spec file being used already exists, the gem will append to the file.

acop -u www.google.com -g rspec
acop -f list_of_urls -g rspec

Checkpoints

Standard Web Programming

<!DOCTYPE Resource SYSTEM 'foo.dtd'>

Doctype should be specified if frame or iframe elements exist on the page

Appropriate Markup

HTML visual formatting elements like <b></b>, <i></i>, <center></center>, <font></font>, <u></u> should not be used. Use CSS for formatting instead

Title

<title></title>

Page title element should not be empty or missing
There should not be more than one page title

<frameset><frame title=""...

Frame elements should have title attributes
Frame elements should not have title attributes empty

<iframe title=""...

iFrame elements should have title attributes
iFrame elements should not have title attributes empty

Headings

<body><p><h1>Heading 1</h1><h2>Heading 2</h2><p><h3>Heading 3</h3></p></body>

Page must contain atleast one h1 element
The h1 element should have non empty text
Heading elements that follow the h1 element should be properly nested
All subheadings(h2..h6) should have non empty text

HTML lang

<html lang='en'></html>

You should declare the primary language of a page with the html lang attribute

Hyperlinks

<body><a href="www.google.com">Go to Google</a></body>

Hyperlinks should always have text associated with them
There should not be duplicate text for hyperlinks on the same page

Images

<input type='image'...

Image inputs elements should have alt attributes
Image inputs elements should not have alt attributes empty

<img...

Image elements should have alt attributes
Image elements should not have alt attributes empty

<a><img...

Image elements inside anchor tags should have empty alt attributes

Area

<area shape='rect' coords='0,0,82,126' href='sun.htm' alt='Sun'>

Area elements should have an alt attribute
Area element alt attribute cannot be empty

Flashing content

The blink and marquee elements must not be used. Blinking and moving text are an accessibility problems for people with photosenstive epilepsy and visual impairments.

Forms

<form><textarea id='area' rows='3' cols='3'></textarea><label for='area'/></form>

Every form element should have a corresponding label (the label 'for' attribute should match the form field 'id' attribute)

<form><input id='in' type='text' value="input_value"/></form>

Form input elements of type submit|reset|button should not have labels, instead have a non empty 'value' attribute

<label for="label1">Label 1</label><label for="label2">Label 2</label>

Labels for form controls should have non-empty text

<legend>Legend 1</legend>

Legends specified for fieldsets or otherwise should have non-empty text

<button type="button">Button 1</button>

Buttons should have non-empty text

Tables

<table summary="summary"><th>Table Heading</th><tr><td>Data 1</td></tr></table>

Table should have a table header
Table should have a non empty summary attribute
Table headers should have a non empty scope attribute specifying whether it is for a row or column

Tests

Running the rspec tests

cd spec; rspec acop_spec.rb

Additional Resources

While this gem does attempt to flag as many accessibility concerns as possible, there are numerous others that cannot be automated or are difficult to automate. Below are excellent resources that I would encourage anybody using this gem to also go through

Bugs

Report bugs and requests at the Github page.

acop

Development