Section 5.3: Conducting Accessibility Evaluations and Testing, Part 2
Activity 1: Practice with accessibility evaluation steps
One of the first things you want to do when beginning an evaluation is to get an overview of a site and to select key pages you want to evaluate. Suppose you want to evaluate the UK's National Archives on Paleography 
(and you are only interested in the pages that have a URL that starts with www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/palaeography and not the general national archives site.) Review the site and answer the following questions.
Question 1
Although the specific pages may vary, about 7 or 5 - 10 would probably cover the entry page and most of the different types of pages this site uses. For example, the sample of pages could include:
- The beginning page of the Paleography tutorial (the introduction)
www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/palaeography/default.htm - Where to start page (this seems the same as Quick Reference page)
www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/palaeography/where_to_start.htm - The interactive Paleography tutorial
www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/palaeography/tutorial/default.htm - As well as 1 of the documents such as Document 3
www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/palaeography/doc3/default.htm - And one of the transcribing exercises for Document 3
www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/palaeography/doc3/doc3_01.htm - Further practice
www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/palaeography/further_practice.htm - And The ducking stool game
www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/palaeography/game/default.htm
Question 2
After you have chosen your pages, you want to evaluate them using a tool for automated evaluation. Evaluate the beginning page of the Paleography tutorial using the WAVE either from the tools menu of the accessibility toolbar if you are using IE or directly from the WAVE site.
One small greater than sign is missing alt text and the top navigation uses javascript to activate the submenus or the menus that dropdown. The warning mentions that they are offered as onclick and as onkeypress. Offering both is helpful because it means using either a keyboard or a mouse can activate the menus so this is not an area of concern but was highlighted by the tool. This page has no forms or data tables.
Question 3
Evaluate the Freer and Sackler Galleries pages.
Many images are missing alt text. Many of the images are spacer images but even though they are not important to the content you need to put empty alt on them in order to ensure that screen readers are not reading these unimportant images. All the image links at the bottom of the page are also missing alt text.
