Web Accessibility Toolbar 2012

April 13, 2012Technical

The Web Accessibility Toolbar has been updated with 2 new features: Thanks to Jun for all his work!

  1. WAT check menu Check current page using the W3C Nu Markup Validation Service (can check local/behind firewall pages as long as there is an Internet connection)
    1. check using page DOCTYPE
    2. check using page DOCTYPE (in a new tab/window)
    3. check using HTML5 DOCTYPE – overrides page doctype
    4. check using HTML5 DOCTYPE – overrides page doctype(in a new tab/window)
    5. Filter Validation results (shows only results relevant to WCAG 2.0 success criterion 4.1.1 Parsing) selecting this on the results page of the W3C Nu Markup Validation Service will filter out any errors not relevant to the WCAG 2.0 parsing criteria. (Refer to: WCAG 2.0 parsing error bookmarklet for more details.)
  2. WAT browser menuOpen in other browsers: This feature replaces the Firefox and Opera buttons on the previous WAT version. It allows you to add any browser you have installed. Once added the browsers will show in the list and you can open the current page open in IE, in the selected browser.

WAT 2012 Download

Downloads available from the Web Accessibility Toolbar resource page.

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About Steve Faulkner

Steve was the Chief Accessibility Officer at TPGi before he left in October 2023. He joined TPGi in 2006 and was previously a Senior Web Accessibility Consultant at vision australia. Steve is a member of several groups, including the W3C Web Platforms Working Group and the W3C ARIA Working Group. He is an editor of several specifications at the W3C including ARIA in HTML and HTML Accessibility API Mappings 1.0. He also develops and maintains HTML5accessibility and the JAWS bug tracker/standards support.

Comments

Steve Faulkner says:
April 14, 2012 at 11:54 am

Several people had reported an issue with the WAT 2012 when using with Windows XP and IE 8. This has now been fixed. Thanks for the feedback.

Lamyrus says:
April 16, 2012 at 12:20 pm

Well, I’d like to use it. But… it is not working for Mac OS X.
Why is it that these tools almost always are only for Windows?
There are more platforms for building websites on.
Also Linux.
(I know the design world isn’t largely Mac anymore.
But it isn’t only windows either.
Could you please release/make a version for Mac and Linux also?
Thanks in advance.

Steve Faulkner says:
April 17, 2012 at 10:39 am

Hi Lamyrus,
I am sorry that you cannot use the WAT, there are many other accessibility testing tools available that work on other platforms and browsers. I do not have the time and resources to develop versions for Mac and Linux, but am happy to collaborate with anyone the does.

Vivienne Conway says:
May 31, 2012 at 2:46 am

With the new version of the WAT, if you click on IE, you don’t have any options to turn off css etc. as you did with the old version. (Using IE9, but was before also). Also, the Table Inspector doesn’t seem to be active.

Steve Faulkner says:
May 31, 2012 at 3:26 pm

Hi Vivienne,
the features are there in my IE? I am running IE9 on windows 7 and also on vista. Thanks for pointing out the juicy studio table inpsector not working. I have fixed and uploaded an update, same URL, so you can download and re-install and all should be well.

Vivienne Conway says:
June 4, 2012 at 11:19 pm

Thanks for the fix Steve. The table inspector is now working fine – interestingly when I re-installed the toolbar the problem with the IE tab in IE9 is also fixed. All good – thanks so much for the quick response.