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WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool

WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool

Overview

What is WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool?

WAVE is a suite of evaluation tools that helps authors make their web content more accessible to individuals with disabilities. WAVE can identify many accessibility and Web Content Accessibility Guideline (WCAG) errors, but also facilitates human evaluation of web content.…

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Recent Reviews

It gets the job done

5 out of 10
February 16, 2024
We use this for very basic accessibility testing for our websites and applications and is by no means a comprehensive breakdown of the …
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TrustRadius Insights

Comprehensive and Helpful Reports: Many users have found the reports generated by the product to be comprehensive and helpful in …
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Reviewer Pros & Cons

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Pricing

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WAVE API Credits 10000+

$0.25

Cloud
per credit

WAVE API Credits 1000-9999

$0.3

Cloud
per credit

WAVE API Credits 250-999

$0.4

Cloud
per credit

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Product Details

What is WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool?

WAVE is a suite of evaluation tools that helps authors make their web content more accessible to individuals with disabilities. WAVE can identify many accessibility and Web Content Accessibility Guideline (WCAG) errors, but also facilitates human evaluation of web content. The vendor, WebAIM who offers WAVE as a free suite of tools, states their philosophy is to focus on issues that they know impact end users, facilitate human evaluation, and to educate about web accessibility.

The online WAVE tool can be used by entering a web page address (URL) in the field above. WAVE Chrome, Firefox, and Edge browser extensions are available for testing accessibility directly within a web browser - handy for checking password protected, locally stored, or highly dynamic pages. They also have a Accessibility IMpact (AIM) service, subscription WAVE API, and a stand-alone WAVE API and testing engine for collecting data on many pages. For enterprise-level reporting and tracking of accessibility, WAVE powers the Pope Tech accessibility tool.

The WAVE Browser Extension
The WAVE Chrome, Firefox, and Edge extensions allows users to evaluate web content for accessibility issues directly within a browser. Because the extension runs entirely within a web browser, no information is sent to the WAVE server. This ensures 100% private and secure accessibility reporting. The extension can check intranet, password-protected, dynamically generated, or sensitive web pages. Also, because the WAVE extension evaluates the rendered version of your page, locally displayed styles and dynamically-generated content from scripts or AJAX can be evaluated.

The WAVE API
The WAVE API allows automated and remote accessibility analysis of web pages using the WAVE processing engine. Users send the URL or content of the page to be analyzed, and WAVE sends back useful data about how accessible it is. The API engine evaluates the user's web page after CSS and JavaScript has been applied resulting in a very accurate evaluation of end user accessibility.

The would-be user registers for a new API key and can purchase WAVE API credits. All new accounts get 100 free credits. Additional credits are available for as little as $.025 each. The more purchased, the less expensive credits become. For those with APIs, the user performs a simple GET request that contains an API key and the URL of the page to check, and WAVE sendS back results data in either JSON or XML format. It can be customized to get more or less data.

Pope Tech - Powered by WAVE
Pope Tech is an enterprise-level web accessibility evaluation system based on WAVE. This tool helps organizations large and small significantly improve their web site accessibility for people with disabilities by providing monitoring and reporting of accessibility over time.

WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool Video

WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(5)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

Comprehensive and Helpful Reports: Many users have found the reports generated by the product to be comprehensive and helpful in identifying and rectifying accessibility issues quickly. The detailed analysis provided by the product's dashboard is praised for its usefulness in making business decisions.

Customizable Settings: Users appreciate the ability to customize settings according to their preferences, such as scanning the entire webpage or specific sections, and choosing to ignore certain types of accessibility issues. This flexibility allows users to tailor the product to their specific needs.

Seamless Integration through API: Users appreciate the seamless integration of accessibility testing into their development process through the API. This feature streamlines workflow and ensures that website accessibility is addressed from an early stage.

Limited customization options: Some users have expressed a desire for more customization options to tailor the accessibility checks to their specific needs. They feel that having the ability to customize the checks would greatly enhance the usability and effectiveness of the API for their particular use cases.

Cluttered dashboard: The cluttered dashboard has been mentioned by some users as unhelpful. They find it overwhelming and difficult to navigate, which can hinder their workflow when trying to manage and track accessibility issues.

Lack of advanced features and functionality: Several users have noted that they feel the API lacks certain advanced features and functionality that could be useful for specific use cases. They believe that incorporating these additional capabilities would make the API even more robust and valuable in addressing complex accessibility requirements.

Reviews

(1-1 of 1)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
February 16, 2024

It gets the job done

Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use this for very basic accessibility testing for our websites and applications and is by no means a comprehensive breakdown of the state of accessibility.
  • Identifies contrast errors
  • Identifies skipped headings
  • locates hidden or empty containers
  • It uses pt VS px. Nobody outside of print is using pt
  • It has some tools and they are incomplete at best
  • misidentifies inputs as needing labels (like a submit which does not require a label)
This is pretty middle of the road. It does a good job of picking out some of the low-hanging fruit, but it's not going properly evaluate semantic structure and will pop several false positives. Additionally, the tools are incomplete. For instance, the contrast editor will allow you to test your colors with sliders so you can get the closest color that passes; however, that isn't how color palettes work, you generally don't get to change a companies palette without a lot of pain; furthermore, there is no ability to adjust the font-size and both font-size AND color are used to determine contrast requirements. Oh, and they use points VS pixels...nobody is using points on the web even if the ADA uses them in their fairly dated guidelines. Text from the actual contrast editor "Text is present that has a contrast ratio less than 4.5:1, or large text (larger than 18 point or 14 point bold) has a contrast ratio less than 3:1.". 14pt = 18.66 pixels, so I can see their logic even if I don't agree with it.
Accessibility Testing (6)
56.66666666666667%
5.7
Accessibility Scanning and Assessment
70%
7.0
Issue Ranking
80%
8.0
Manual Auditing Services
50%
5.0
Compliance Reporting and Tracking
20%
2.0
Color/Contrast Analysis
60%
6.0
HTML and CSS scanning
60%
6.0
  • It's free, so it certainly does help
  • It gets the low hanging fruit quickly
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