The University of Illinois Center for Instructional Technology Accessibility (CITA) has just released a new advanced tool for inspecting web pages for accessibility. The Web Accessibility Visualizer allows users to view web pages in 10 different views to illustrate how information on a web page can detect if accessibility principles are not followed. The tool is useful for people who want different page views at a single mouse click.

For example, the 'Links' view of the Visualizer Tool greys out non-link content and makes links salient. Doing so would help web authors and analyzers determine the relevancy of link text and usefulness of link text.

The web page Linearizer in the Visualizer tool allows users to see how linear user agents, like a screen reader, would read a table. It rearranges the table such that it displays cell by cell in the order of how a screen reader would read it.

Other views within the Visualizer Tool include a Data Tables viewer, Page Headers viewer, Item Lists viewer, Frames viewer, Forms viewer, Access Keys viewer, Page Structure viewer, Document Title viewer, and Banner Roles viewer.

Other features in the viewer also allow users to view the page in text-only form. This helps in reviewing pages for extraneous visual-only content. The Tool also filters images and multimedia and allows you to classify images and multimedia for informative, style, or link purposes.

In summary, the Web Accessibility Visualizer Tool is good for people who want the functionality of many web accessibility checkers or browser accessibility-plug-ins, but without the complexity and fewer mouse clicks. The Tool gives developers, authors, and general users the power to break down pages into individual components without the need for commercial or complicated packages. Try out the Web Accessibility Visualizer Tool for yourself at:
http://devserv.rehab.uiuc.edu/accwebsim/