What is the Tool? What Does It Do?
The U-M Accessibility Scanner is a web based tool (based on Deque's axe Monitor technology) that you can use to scan informational web systems and get a baseline report on your systems’ accessibility. The scans look for violations or possible violations of WCAG 2.0 AA, the standard adopted by the University of Michigan.
The scan also produces higher level reports as well as progress charts that are useful for administrators, who can get an overview of a given website or all the websites in the unit.
All reports can be filtered and sorted by several criteria: severity, type, pages, etc.
You can also set up a scheduled scan to see improvement through time.
Shortcomings
The report will contain some issues that may not apply, these are flagged. Staff will need to examine them to make that determination. It will also not catch certain types of issues as well, especially where a high degree of interactivity is involved. Some additional functional testing will be needed. Please see the Functional Testing addendum.
axe Monitor was not designed to work with websites like Wolverine Access where a user makes selections or inputs information to navigate the different parts of the site. Sites like these will have to be assessed via semi-automated testing and functional testing.
Who the Tool Is For (Roles, Departments, etc.)
The tool is intended to help units and departments that have a large web presence make their offerings accessible. Configuring the scans, interpreting the results, and performing the additional functional assessments involve a degree of technical skill, so it is probably most appropriate to moderately knowledgeable technical staff.
Administrative staff have access to high level overviews of the accessibility of individual sites or all sites in a unit. The data in these overviews can be used to communicate with unit leadership.