Accessibility Tools

University Supported Tools

These are tools supported by UConn that you can use to check the accessibility of your HuskyCT/Blackboard course and its content, and your websites and their content.

  • Blackboard Ally: Automatically checks course materials for accessibility issues, provides instructors with remediation guidance, and offers students alternative accessible formats.
  • Siteimprove: A web crawler that checks and monitors your websites for accessibility compliance, broken links, and quality assurance.
  • Ally for Web: An extension to Blackboard Ally that extends accessibility scoring and remediation features to websites and their content.

If you would like to request access to Blackboard Ally or Siteimprove, you can follow this link to create a request ticket with the ITS Service Desk or follow the link in our Contact Us page and navigate to “Accessibility Review Requests or Accessibility Tool Requests” > Access to Siteimprove or Blackboard Ally.

Assistive Technologies

Students with disabilities and impairments rely on these assistive technologies. To see how we can understand their user experience and better help students with disabilities, it is important to be familiar with these tools.

Browser Tools and Extensions

These are accessibility insight tools that can easily be integrated with your web browser. You can use these tools to check for accessibility features like color contrast or proper heading hierarchy.

  • WAVE: Developed by WebAIM, this online tool evaluates the accessibility of a web page and shows results using icons and indicators, embedded onto the original page. It’s available as a standalone website, or as the WAVE browser extension for both Chrome and Firefox.
  • Chrome DevTools Accessibility Reference
  • Firefox Accessibility Inspector
  • Microsoft Edge DevTools: Accessibility
  • Accessibility Bookmarklets: This suite of bookmarklets can be used in any browser and work by visually highlighting specific accessibility features within a web page, including ARIA landmarks, headings, lists, and accessibility-related features of images and forms.
  • Accessibility Insights: This robust accessibility checker and educational tool from Microsoft is available as an extension for Chrome or Edge, or as downloadable software for checking Windows applications.
  • AInspector WCAG Firefox Extension: This extension was developed at the University of Illinois.
  • axe: This accessibility testing toolkit from Deque (accessibility consultancy) is available as an API that can be integrated into automated testing processes for web development. Android Accessibility is also available as well the axe Chrome Extension.
  • Web Developer Extension: This browser extension works for Firefox or Chrome. This highly useful toolbar from Chris Pederick is packed with features, including many that help check web pages for accessibility features.

Coding Guidelines

When writing code, it is important to follow accessibility standards to ensure that applications can be used by everyone, including individuals with impairments and disabilities.

Code Validators

To ensure that your code meets accessibility standards, use the following code validators.

  • HTML Validator – Developed by W3C.
  • CSS Validator – Developed by W3C.
  • HTML Tidy: This is a software library that evaluates and cleans up HTML, automatically generating a reformatted (i.e., “tidied”) version. HTML Tidy is widely available, and is integrated into many web coding applications as documented on their website.
  • HTML Validator Browser Extensions: for Chrome and Firefox, based on HTML Tidy and OpenSG, includes accessibility checks that can be toggled on via the Options menu.
  • WebVTT Validator: This validates timed text files to be used with HTML video, e.g., for captions, subtitles, chapters, and descriptions.