WAVE Blog

Since it was launched in January, the server version of WAVE has processed nearly 500,000 distinct WAVE reports! We are thrilled that it has been so popular.

We spend a lot of time monitoring WAVE to make sure it is functioning properly and is not being abused/misused. Recently, there has been a great increase in the number of automate bot and spam submissions to WAVE. This has resulted in degraded performance for legitimate users. WAVE now includes some tests to guard against this type of misuse.

The newly updated WAVE code now detects most automated spam submissions. It has better checks for properly formatted URLs, ensures that uploaded code is submitted from the WAVE homepage, detects inappropriate content, and a few other things. WAVE now auto-blacklists IP addresses that are misusing WAVE. After 10 instances of abuse, the IP address is automatically blacklisted.

Identifying less blatant abuses of WAVE is very difficult. WAVE limits the number of submissions per minute and hour and day. These limitations are to ensure that all users have access to WAVE and that some users are not misusing WAVE or automating WAVE reports (something that is against our Terms of Use, though we do grant permission to do this in certain instances). Despite these limitations, we’ve had one IP address that has processed 6700 WAVE reports and 20 distinct IP address have run over 1000 WAVE reports! There are certainly some power-WAVE users out there!

Distinguishing between users that use WAVE a lot and bots is very difficult. To ensure better performance for legitimate users, we have loosened the limitations on the number of reports that can be processed in any given time period, but at the same time have implemented much harsher penalties for going over those limitations. When a user surpasses the limitations or submits automated or spam-like content to WAVE, they are given several warnings. Continued abuse will result in an automatic blacklisting of their IP address.

We know of several instances where WAVE reports have been implemented into quality assurance, content management, and site authoring systems. We are thrilled that WAVE is being used in such ways and want to ensure that such uses of WAVE do not result in a blacklisting. If you are interested in using WAVE to perform automated or site-wide reports or if you want to automatically post content directly to the WAVE result page (e.g., bypass the homepage), please contact us and describe how you are using WAVE. If appropriate, we can add your IP address to a whitelist or provide a key that bypasses many of these tests.

We hope these changes improve WAVE for everyone. We plan to continue monitoring and make further tweaks or changes in the future as necessary as we continue our efforts to make WAVE the best accessibility evaluation tool available.

Today we launched some web site changes.

Cosmetic and Client-side Changes

• Fixed some layout issues to resolve overlapping page elements at very low resolutions. WAVE pages now span the entire screen width.
• Fixed some minor script compatibility issues with Internet Explorer 6.
• Added a few script-driven accessibility enhancements.
• Dramatically optimized and cleaned up the scripting used on the site. It now uses 2 .js files instead of 6. Progressive enhancement of WAVE functionality (streamlined interface, tooltips, accordian effect on homepage, automatic toggling of page styles, etc.) is done using the MooTools framework.

Updated Help Page

One of the most common questions we get from WAVE users is, “What guidelines does WAVE use? WCAG? Section 508? Others?” This question is now properly addressed on the Help page. In short, WAVE does not limit itself to specific guidelines. We use common guidelines to help develop WAVE tests, but WAVE includes as many real life aspects of accessibility as we have been able to come up with. WAVE also flags some accessibility issues as errors even though they are not identified in any set of guidelines. Our approach with WAVE is to help web content become accessible, not merely compliant with guidelines or standards. While WAVE is a powerful tool in determining compliance, it does not directly identify aspects of compliance or non-compliance to specific guidelines.

We’re happy to announce the release of an updated version of the WAVE Toolbar. You can install the new version at http://wave.webaim.org/toolbar – or if you already have the toolbar, you can force the update by going to the Add-ons menu in Firefox and selecting Find Updates.

While still in beta, this release includes many updates and additional features.

Firefox 3 compatibility

The updated toolbar provides full support for Firefox 3. There were some issues with the previous toolbar version in the Release Candidate versions of FF3. It also is MUCH faster in FF3.

New mini-toolbar button

The new toolbar now includes a small WAVE button that can be positioned almost anywhere within the chrome of Firefox, giving you quick access to WAVE functionality. The button can even be positioned on OTHER toolbars, such as the Bookmarks toolbar.

To move the WAVE button, right click on the toolbar, select Customize… and then drag the button (or any of the WAVE buttons for that matter) to its new location on the Firefox window. You can even add the button to other Add-ons. When you’re done, click Done in the Customize window.

New features

• There is a new Reset Page icon that returns the page to it’s un-WAVEed status. This does not refresh the page.
• There is a new Toggle styles icon that allows you to remove the page styles and linearize tables. Beyond being a great evaluation tool by itself, this is also useful on pages that become broken or cluttered when a WAVE report is displayed.
• You can now customize the toolbar to display both icons and labels, icons only, or labels only. This can be helpful if you want to reduce the size or display of the toolbar.

Bug fixes

• If you select two reports consecutively, the reports now display correctly.
• WAVE now properly displays icons withing nested frames and iframes.
• The possible heading rule is much more accurate with fewer false alerts.
• Fixed a bug that incorrectly flagged any image with missing alt text within a link as an error. If you have an image with empty alt text within a link, it is no longer an error as long as there is text within the link or another image that has alternative text. Any image with a missing alt attribute is still flagged as an error.
• Fixed a bug that displayed an error if an image with alt text was used as a label for a form element.

The updates to WAVE rules above have also been implemented into the server version of WAVE.

While you’re checking out WAVE, it would be really great if you could take a few moments to post a review and rating of the toolbar at the Firefox Add-ons Site. Without reviews and ratings, the toolbar will be forever marked as “experimental”.

If you have any feedback or recommendations for WAVE or the WAVE toolbar, please send us feedback.

The WAVE Toolbar is now available at the Mozilla Add-ons site – https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6720

It will continue to be available here at wave.webaim.org, but making it available on the Mozilla site will give it more exposure.

Of note, it is listed as an ‘experimental’ add-on because it has not gone through Mozilla’s review process which apparently is taking several weeks right now. You can help by rating the toolbar and leaving a quick review.

Now that the first version of the WAVE Toolbar for Firefox has been released, we’re shifting our development attention back to the main server-side WAVE application. Updates being prepared include several bug fixes, a few new tests (plus tweaks to existing tests), and numerous performance improvements. However, we still have time to add things to that list, so if there’s a particular WAVE bug you really want fixed, or a feature you’d love to see implemented, now is your chance to let us know. (Just add a comment to this post).

The slides from our presentation at CSUN are available at http://wave.webaim.org/presentations/csun2008/. These may not make a whole lot of sense out of context, but they are there for your perusal.

We had many excellent conversations about WAVE at CSUN and it was fun to show it off a bit. We have MANY ideas for future development and are currently working on fixing some current bugs, increasing optimization, and moving both the server version and toolbar out of beta. As always, your feedback is very helpful. We’ll post more details about the future of WAVE in the coming weeks.

We’re happy to announce the beta release of the WAVE Firefox toolbar. You can download and install the toolbar at http://wave.webaim.org/toolbar.

The toolbar processes web content as it appears within the Firefox browser and does not rely upon server processing to generate a WAVE report. This allows secure evaluation of password protected, intranet, dynamically generated, or sensitive web pages. Because the WAVE toolbar evaluates the rendered version of your page, locally displayed styles and dynamically-generated content from scripts or AJAX can be evaluated.

This is very much a beta release. A few key features are missing in this version that will be made available in a future release in the coming weeks:

• The icon tooltips that provide additional information about the WAVE icons are not present. However, alt and title text for the icons do provide a brief overview of what the icon is indicating. Additionally, a toolbar button will display the full icons key in a new tab.
• Page-wide icons (such as those for missing page title, meta refresh, etc.) do not display.
• There is no option to disable styles, though the WAVE toolbar can be used in conjunction with the Web Developer or other toolbars to remove the document styles and leave the WAVE icons in place.
• There is not a direct indication of how many (if any) accessibility errors are in the document. You must scan for red icons to see if there are obvious errors.

Again, all of these features will be implemented into the toolbar in the near future. Additionally, we will soon have full Firefox 3 support.

We have lots of ideas for the WAVE toolbar, but would appreciate any feedback, bug reports, or recommendations you have. You can either post a comment below or use the feedback form.

Welcome to the new WAVE blog.

The WAVE developers from WebAIM will be using this blog to post information about WAVE updates and future developments. We invite you to check back often or subscribe to the RSS feed and participate in the discussion here. We want WAVE to be the most powerful, user-friendly web accessibility evaluation tool on the planet and appreciate your use of WAVE and invite you to post any feedback or recommendations you may have.