Developers of software include technology where possible to aid users with a minor or significant disability. Microsoft, for example, include ways to navigate without a mouse, with the aid of a magnifier or even simplistic screen readers.

Users with a visual impairment may find the magnifying abilities of the popular browsers helpful when looking at your site. It is therefore important to learn how these technologies work and include their use in your site testing.

Further reading

• Accessibility Features in Firefox
• Accessibility Tutorials for Microsoft Products

Sitemorse performs a selection of automated accessibility tests. Wherever possible, the tool identifies explicit problems. Otherwise, users are alerted to possible problems and a manual check is required. Automated testing is appropriate for some, not all, accessibility tests.

W3C Validation, Watchfire, Bobby and others are not as comprehensive tools as Sitemorse – for instance in verifying that HTML code is correct. For example, the W3C validator cannot tell you that color="lemon" is an invalid attribute value (there is no colour "lemon" defined in the HTML standard).

Automated testing is possible for some W3C accessibility criteria. Different tools implement tests for different criteria. Sitemorse automated accessibility tests cover more criteria than our competitors’ tools do. Consequently, Sitemorse may flag accessibility problems that other tools miss.

For example the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 - Checkpoint 11.2 concerns the avoidance of deprecated HTML tags. Tests for this particular criterion are not offered by the majority of competitive tools.

It is also important to note the difference between simply validating code and the detailed tests Sitemorse performs. Sitemorse tests cover the whole breadth of a site - including seldom used pages. The range of tests are also vast, including verifying that email address actually work, accessibility checks and performance analysis.

Often web developers need to redirect a visitor to another part of their website, another domain or just refresh the page itself with an updated version. Server side techniques have the advantage of wide acceptance, although their use requires access to the web server. Conversely client side methods are available to all content writers, but experience mixed results.

JavaScript

Aimed at creating dynamic pages JavaScript is usually overkill for a simple redirect. Such examples include:

<SCRIPT>window.location.replace("/aaaa");</SCRIPT>

Since not all browsers support JavaScript it should never be used to control access to a site. With the above code and scripting disabled the user would see just a blank page. With no evidence your organisation even exists.

Meta Refresh tag

<meta http-equiv=refresh content="1 URL=http://www.example.org/bar">

This tag causes the page to redirect to the new URL after 1 second.

Such tags are not recommended, WCAG 7.4 and 7.5 forbid "periodically auto-refreshing pages" and the use of "markup to redirect pages automatically".

Alternatively by entering a refresh interval of 0 the page reloads instantly. A method best used when you are unable to deploy server side redirects.

Server Side "3xx" Redirects

Each web server handles the configuration of redirects differently. While apache allows web developers to edit the '.htaccess' file to store permanent and temporary redirects other such as Microsoft's IIS require administrative access.

1. Moved Permanently

   The requested resource has moved to a new permanent URL. The client should store this and not check again until it's cache is cleared.

   Best used when content has moved for the foreseeable future.

2. Temporary Redirect

   The requested resources has moved to a new location, however the client should continue to check the existing location as the move is temporary.

Redirect once and once only

Redirects have their place, but can be over used. Try to avoid redirecting to one page, which redirects to another and so on. Keep it simple.

Further Information

• Apache HTTP Server Version 2.4: Redirect Directive
• How To Redirect Browser Requests in Internet Information Services 5.0
• Use standard redirects: don't break the back button