WAVE Blog

Today we have released a new version of the WAVE toolbar that is supported by Firefox 4 Beta.

We are aware of some bugs mainly relating the Options dialog and we are working hard to fix them. However, if you need any of the features in the Options dialog and haven’t updated to Firefox 4, there shouldn’t be any problems.

If you have any comments or questions we are always open to feedback and we are always looking into new ways of making the WAVE Toolbar more stable and powerful. If you have any bugs you would like to report please contact us.

We recently had some technical difficulties with the webserver powering WAVE, and as a result of which the WAVE website and service was down yesterday from approximately 9am to 3pm MST yesterday. Everything is mostly restored now, but we’re still working on bringing all the auxiliary components and systems back up. If you notice any bugs or strange behavior with WAVE today, please let us know by commenting on this post (as the main feedback/contact form is still having some issues).

Today we have released a new version of the WAVE toolbar and the Dreamweaver Extension. The changes in these new versions are mostly minor bug fixes in the toolbar and some incompatibility issues in the Dreamweaver Extension.

If you have any comments or questions we are always open to feedback. It is in our best interest to make our tools more stable, powerful, and useful every day.

Download the WAVE toolbar
Download the Dreamweaver Extension

WebAIM is excited to announce the beta release of a WAVE Dreamweaver Extension. This extension allows you to evaluate the accessibility of content using the popular WAVE web accessibility evaluation tool directly within Adobe Dreamweaver. The Dreamweaver extension gives additional flexibility and speed to Adobe Dreamweaver users by integrating WAVE directly into the Dreamweaver environment.

When activated, the extension sends the active web page document (or selected portions of the document) from Dreamweaver to the WAVE server for evaluation, then displays the full WAVE report directly within Dreamweaver or within your default web browser.

Note that this is a beta release. Please give us your opinion and if you have any questions, issues, or bugs to report, please contact us.

Download the WAVE Dreamweaver Extension

We are seeking feedback on your usage of WAVE and ways that we can make WAVE better for you. Please take a few minutes to complete our brief, 5-minute survey and provide us feedback that will guide future development of WAVE.

UPDATE: The WAVE user survey is now closed. Thanks to everyone who participated.

Today we have updated the online version of WAVE. The changes include some bug fixes and new features, such as updating the backend to use XulRunner1.9.1 (i.e., Firefox 3.5), which should make WAVE faster and more reliable.

Some of these fixes are also being implemented into an updated Firefox toolbar version and will be available in the near future.

If you have any comments or questions we are always open to feedback. It is in our best interest to make WAVE more stable, powerful, and useful every day and with your help we can make it even better every day.

As part of our launch of the Spanish language version of WAVE, we recently updated several components of the WAVE backend framework and evaluation rules.

In addition to the Spanish version, notable new features include:

• Better Unicode support
  • WAVE support for UTF-8 has been vastly improved. Evaluation of web content containing Unicode characters or foreign languages should now work correctly.
• New evaluation rules.
  • Missing structure. WAVE now issues an alert on pages that do not contain any headings. While this may not be an error on all web content, most full size documents should have a heading structure. The absence of any headings is usually an indication accessibility issues – that the document needs structure or that visual headings should be marked up as true headings.
  • Empty link. WAVE now flags as an error all links that do not contain any text. Because links provide functionality, assistive technologies require some text to be read when the link is encountered. If a link is empty, screen readers will revert to reading the link URL, which often is not helpful.

In addition, lots of small bugs and other issues were fixed, many of which were originally reported to us by WAVE users.

Una versión en español de este anuncio está disponible en este enlace: http://wave.webaim.org/es/

WebAIM is excited to announce the release of the Spanish version (first announced last year) of the WAVE web accessibility evaluation tool. This version also includes several updates, bug fixes, and a couple of new rules.

The Center for Persons with Disabilities at Utah State University funded the translation of the WAVE web tool and Firefox toolbar into Spanish.

Jon Whiting and Diogenes Hernandez, members of the WebAIM team, coordinated this project. We would like to give special thanks to Nestor Rojas who gave significant feedback and to all others who contributed to the beta version of the Spanish translation.

This is a great success for WebAIM, and we would appreciate your help to expand WAVE even more. To do this, you can spread the word and translate into other languages. If you are able, please circulate this announcement to Spanish-language accessibility forums and discussion lists and to Spanish-speaking individuals. Also, if you would like to help us translate WAVE into another language, let us know.

A new, much improved version of the WAVE Firefox Toolbar has been released. This version includes numerous updates, bug fixes, and new features, including:

• Support for several new tests and icons.
• Increased accuracy of tests and reporting.
• Better support for complex pages, including processing of pages with frames and iframes.
• Customizable shortcut key functionality to quickly and easily process WAVE reports.
• WAVE icons now feature a tooltip window that provides additional detail about the icon. Simply place your mouse over an icon to see these additional details.
• A new context menu. Right click…, WAVE Toolbar…, then select a report option.This context menu can be turned on or off in the Options.
• An improved mini-toolbar. You can drag the WAVE toolbar icon onto any other Firefox toolbar for quick access to WAVE Toolbar functionality while using only a small amount of screen real estate.

Download the new toolbar at http://wave.webaim.org/toolbar

WebAIM is pleased to announce that a new version of WAVE was released today. This significant update reflects many months of work on our part to make WAVE more stable, powerful, and useful. Since the version 4 beta was launched just over a year ago, WAVE has been used to analyze nearly a million web pages for accessibility. Today’s launch signifies a significant step forward in making WAVE the most powerful and useful (and ALWAYS free) web accessibility tool available.

Notable new and improved features:

• Simplified and streamlined user interface
• Significantly re-engineered back-end framework
  • Better stability and significantly faster processing of pages
  • Single sourced code for server version of WAVE and the Firefox toolbar
  • More powerful and flexible logic for WAVE evaluation rules
• Support for internationalization. Initial translations will be provided in coming months.
• Several new WAVE rules
  • Missing fieldset – alert when a group of check boxes or radio buttons is not enclosed in a fieldset
  • ARIA – indicator for all ARIA roles, properties, and attributes
  • Unlabeled form element with title – alerts users to form elements that do not have an associated label, but do have the necessary title attribute
  • Blink
  • Many other rules have been further polished and improved for accuracy

All of these new features and many more are currently being implemented into an updated Firefox toolbar which will be available in the near future.

We are always open to feedback and hope that you will take some time to review the new WAVE features and let us know how we can make it even better.