There are a number of great agencies, firms and organizations that can assist vendors with improving the compliance of their products. A number of them also provide service training and free webinars to inform designers and developers of technology advancements and tricks to making products accessible and usable. To name a few:

• National Center for Accessible Media
• Deque
• Knowbility
• Level Access (formerly SSB Bart Group)
• WebAIM (Web Accessibility in Mind)

Testing Tools

Automated tools can catch a number of compliance issues, however, some will need manual checking.

Depending on your product, there are some great testing tools to assist you along the way. 

• Texas A&M University’s Information Technology Accessibility website provide a comprehensive list of tools.
• W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)’s Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools List provide an extended list of tools and filtered searching.
• Department of Homeland Security provide great examples of Section 508 Compliance Test Processes, including baseline tests for software and web accessibility and application accessibility.

Interesting ones that have come down the pipeline recently include:

• Emerge Interactive’s WCAG Checklist App
• tota11y, an accessibility visualization toolkit (currently implemented in Tarleton’s web content management system)

Some enterprise testing tools include:

• Compliance Sheriff
• Siteimprove (currently implemented at Tarleton for reporting to the Texas Department of Information Resources)
• WorldSpace Attest