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WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool

Score5 out of 10

5 Reviews and Ratings

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What is WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool?

WAVE is a suite of evaluation tools that helps authors make their web content more accessible to individuals with disabilities. WAVE can identify many accessibility and Web Content Accessibility Guideline (WCAG) errors, but also facilitates human evaluation of web content. The vendor, WebAIM who offers WAVE as a free suite of tools, states their philosophy is to focus on issues that they know impact end users, facilitate human evaluation, and to educate about web accessibility.

The online WAVE tool can be used by entering a web page address (URL) in the field above. WAVE Chrome, Firefox, and Edge browser extensions are available for testing accessibility directly within a web browser - handy for checking password protected, locally stored, or highly dynamic pages. They also have a Accessibility IMpact (AIM) service, subscription WAVE API, and a stand-alone WAVE API and testing engine for collecting data on many pages. For enterprise-level reporting and tracking of accessibility, WAVE powers the Pope Tech accessibility tool.

The WAVE Browser Extension
The WAVE Chrome, Firefox, and Edge extensions allows users to evaluate web content for accessibility issues directly within a browser. Because the extension runs entirely within a web browser, no information is sent to the WAVE server. This ensures 100% private and secure accessibility reporting. The extension can check intranet, password-protected, dynamically generated, or sensitive web pages. Also, because the WAVE extension evaluates the rendered version of your page, locally displayed styles and dynamically-generated content from scripts or AJAX can be evaluated.

The WAVE API
The WAVE API allows automated and remote accessibility analysis of web pages using the WAVE processing engine. Users send the URL or content of the page to be analyzed, and WAVE sends back useful data about how accessible it is. The API engine evaluates the user's web page after CSS and JavaScript has been applied resulting in a very accurate evaluation of end user accessibility.

The would-be user registers for a new API key and can purchase WAVE API credits. All new accounts get 100 free credits. Additional credits are available for as little as $.025 each. The more purchased, the less expensive credits become. For those with APIs, the user performs a simple GET request that contains an API key and the URL of the page to check, and WAVE sendS back results data in either JSON or XML format. It can be customized to get more or less data.

Pope Tech - Powered by WAVE
Pope Tech is an enterprise-level web accessibility evaluation system based on WAVE. This tool helps organizations large and small significantly improve their web site accessibility for people with disabilities by providing monitoring and reporting of accessibility over time.

Categories & Use Cases

Key Features

Learn about the best (and worst!) features WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool has to offer, as determined by TrustRadius' reviewers.
Based on 5 ratings of WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool's features
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Top Performing Features

  • Issue Ranking

    High-priority issues like navigability or legal liability are identified and prioritized over lower-impact issues. Priority rankings may vary based on the type of site or asset.

    Category average: 8.1

  • Accessibility Scanning and Assessment

    The product scans and detects accessibility issues against guidelines and standards such as WCAG, and makes appropriate recommendations for fixing them.

    Category average: 6.7

  • HTML and CSS scanning

    The product can audit HTML and CSS for accessibility.

    Category average: 7.5

Areas for Improvement

  • Color/Contrast Analysis

    The product detects low-contrast or colorblind-unfriendly color schemes and recommends alternative colors.

    Category average: 6.2

  • Manual Auditing Services

    Accessibility experts are available to provide customized guidance, auditing, and assistance.

    Category average: 5.7

  • Compliance Reporting and Tracking

    The product provides dashboards, tracking, and reporting to measure current and/or historical compliance metrics.

    Category average: 4.2