Accessibility tools
There are several free tools and even a Visual Studio internal tool available to check your web pages against the accessibility standards set by the Access Board Section 508 standards and the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Priority 1 and 2.
The first places to go for HTML and CSS validation are both from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3) organization. The HTML validator is at validator.w3.org and the CSS validation is available at jigsaw.w3.org. W3 also has a web site dedicated to accessibility called the Web Accessibility Initiative
Developers at WebAim.org (Web Asccessibility in Mind) have created WAVE, a web accessibility evaluation tool that uses icons and indicators on your web page to show as close as possible how accessible your web content is. The tool has 28 new accessibility tests, including more detailed evaluation of those missing alt text issues. It works like the W3 tools. You can paste a URL into the web tool, upload a file or paste HTML directly into the tool.
For Visual Studio developers you can check accessibility without leaving your IDE. With an .aspx page or HTML page open, go to the tools menu, and the first option available is Check Accessibility. The tool will check your page against the standards set by the WCAG Priority 1 and 2 and the Access Board Section 508.
Several free tools are available at the Web Accessibility Tools Consortium (WAT-C), including a browser plugin for IE (including IE7 and Vista) that provides several different perspectives of your web page and also eases the use of 3rd party online applications. That latest version is 2.0 beta and in the latest version no functions use external scripts and most work with javascript disabled.
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