Accessibility testing on a budget

Online validators

The first thing you should do is check your pages with Bobby. You are limited to how many tests you can run in a given time, and you can only check one page at a time, but it is free! For now at least. However, the biggest caveat to be aware of is that even if you are told that you have passed, you still need to check your page for usability and sense. After all, a page riddled with incorrect and misleading links or alt attributes may still pass Bobby tests, despite it being highly unusable (and extremely frustrating). Bobby will not tell you how your site sounds, but it should be part of the basic pre-flight check.

There are other validators available - for example, Page Valet and The Wave - but Bobby is pretty much the recognised industry standard.

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