The usability of accessibility evaluation tools

A range of accessibility evaluation tools are available to support Web developers in producing accessible Web resources. It is important that these tools support web developers very well, so that the developers can concentrate on the tasks of Web development. In addition, the tools should enhance Web developers understanding of accessibility issues. This paper presents a usability evaluation of five entry level accessibility evaluations tools. A group heuristic evaluation was conducted, with 5 experts in usability and accessibility working through each tool together, but rating usability problems separately. The results showed that the usability of these tools is surprisingly poor and that they do not support web developers adequately in checking the accessibility of their web resources.