FP2003 Accessibility Checker

[jeb]

I'm looking at upgrades and needing to make a decision regarding
FP2003 or the new Dreamweaver MX 2004. My sites require the use of all
accessibility standards (Section 508, W3C, etc). I've been finessing
my way through FP for years and needing to streamline things. The new
Dreamweaver has a significant number of features tied to
accessibility. A search of the MS site found only one reference to
something called "Accessibility Checker" in the upcoming 2003 release.

Any of you Beta users out there - can you give me a review of this?

I've been a FP devotee since the first version, but this may be the
breaking point.

BTW, my spies tell me that the State of Maine government office that
oversees IT will be recommending DW and removing FP. That is a major
amount of software sales that MS will be losing. I suspect other
states and the feds will also be moving in that direction.

jeb

John E. Brandt
Augusta, Maine

(e-mail address removed) (remove nospam)
www.jebswebs.com

 

[Kathleen Anderson [MVP - FP]]

John:
I have one word for the Accessibility Checker in FP2003 - Awesome. You can check one page, selected pages or all the pages in your site against Section 508 and WCAG. The checker can produce a report for you that you can save to work on later, or save for one of your fellow webmasters to use - you can save it in your web. If you get a violation of a WCAG guideline, there a link on the report directly to the guidelines at the W3C. You can also customize the rules used by the Accessibility Checker to add additional rules specific to your organization.

What's especially great about this feature is that you can do this all locally, before you publish your site. You don't have to publish and then use an external tool (Bobby, Cynthia Says, etc.) any more.

--

~ Kathleen Anderson
Microsoft MVP - FrontPage
Spider Web Woman Designs
http://www.spiderwebwoman.com/resources/