KB User's Guide - General Info - Checking KB Documents for Accessibility
TinyMCE Built-In Accessibility Checker
TinyMCE, the newest KB editor, has a built-in accessibility checker that will inform you if there are any issues with your content. It can be found in the tools tab of the editor navigation bar, with an additional shortcut button in the editor toolbar.
When selected this will activate a pop-up with any issues, or an all-clear if there are none. This feature is also automatically triggered when publishing a document. All reported accessibility errors and warning will need to be repaired or otherwise acknowledged before the document can be published.
See KB User's Guide - Documents Tab - TinyMCE Accessibility Checker for more information.
Additional options with the accessibility checker
The KnowledgeBase also leverages the TinyMCE accessibility checker in two other ways.
First, when you click on a document to review it, the accessibility checker will run and return a a message at the top of the review screen identifying the number of issues it found, and list what those issues are:
Administrators and authors can also do a bulk accessibility check by going to the Check Accessibility option in the top left of the Documents tab:
On the Batch Accessibility Checker page, you can process batches of documents using either the Batched IDs or Owner-Based IDs dropdowns. The first will create batches of all published documents (ordered by ID number), while the second will create groups of published docs grouped by owner.
You can also copy and paste any list of up to 100 doc ID numbers into the ID or comma-separated IDs list to create a manual grouping.
Clicking Go to process your selection. When the scan completes, a table will populate with the document title, ID, owner, number of accessibility issues identified, and a list of the issues found.
You can also export this batch's results as a CSV file in the bottom right. Please note that you must do this for each batch that you run. You can then compile a full list of issues in Excel or Google Sheets as desired.
This video walks through the process:
General Webpage Scanning
WAVE is a free web-based tool that can be used to scan an entire page and identify possible accessibility issues. Additionally, it provides useful information for understanding how your document structure (e.g. elements like headings) relates to accessibility.
Supplemental Accessibility Tools
WebAIM's Color Contrast Checker is helpful for verifying that text and background colors have sufficient contrast for users with visual impairments.
These A11Y "Nutrition Cards" for Accessible Components provide a handy reference if you are creating more advanced content that includes interactive elements such as accordions or buttons.
If you want to further check your pages for accessibility, you can use the WebAIM Quick reference or the more fully-featured WCAG 2 checklist and make sure that all the elements on the page meet all of the guidelines outlined in the list.
If making use of custom CSS or forms take a look at Accessible CSS and Accessible Forms.
For more UW specific policy, you can view the official DoIT Make it accessible guides.
If you are aware of other free and useful resources for accessibility checking that you would like to see added to this list, please send your suggestions to kb-team@lists.wisc.edu!