Evaluate Web Accessibility With WAVE Tool

Introduction to Evaluating a Websites Accessibility with WAVE Tool

Checking the accessibility of websites and linked content is integral to ensuring full course accessibility for our students and the community. There are many ways to determine the accessibility of webpages; a good tool is the Wave Evaluation Tool, which can be added to Google’s Chrome browser. WAVE is a web accessibility evaluation tool developed by Web Accessibility in Mind (WebAIM) that provides visual feedback about the accessibility of your web content by injecting icons and indicators into your page.  All analysis is done entirely within the Chrome browser allowing secure valuation of intranet, local, password protected, and other sensitive web pages.

The directions on this page will guide you through assessing web content using WAVE.

How to Use WAVE Tool to Evaluate Web Accessibility

1. Go to the Chrome Web Store.
2. Search and add WAVE Evaluation Tool to your Chrome extensions.
   1. Once it has been added, you can select the WAVE extension in your browser window.

      

3. Go to the website whose accessibility you are trying to determine.
   1. Click the icon to open the WAVE Tool and run the accessibility check.
   2. The WAVE window will open (the left side of the screen) with a summary of the accessibility review. The summary will be shown in a prioritized list with errors, alerts, and structural elements.

      
   3. Click the ‘Details’ icon in the WAVE menu to view the full report. This report provides a list of issues with documentation explaining the need for correction.