There are a variety of accessibility "checkers" available to content developers and assessment personnel. They fall into several categories of implementation:
- Authoring Tool Checkers - These are built-in accessibility features of software applications used to develop websites. Web authoring tools such as Dreamweaver (http://www.macromedia.com/macromedia/accessibility/) and Frontpage (http://www.microsoft.com/frontpage/using/accessibility/default.htm) provide utilities to implement accessibility features during the development phase.
- Stand-Alone Checkers - These are applications that are used during the post-development phase of website management. Some examples are Bobby (http://www.cast.org/bobby/) and Wave (http://www.wave.webaim.org/index.jsp) . Stand-alone checkers are good solutions for individual web developers that have access to the website being checked.
- Enterprise Checkers - These are web-based applications that can check very-large websites and collect/disseminate information in a web-based format. Enterprise Checkers are good for assessing large websites in a decentralized environment where the web content is located on a variety of servers. An example of an Enterprise Checker is WebXM (http://www.watchfire.com/products/webxm/default.aspx). Another example is UsableNet's LIFT (http://www.usablenet.com/)
