Accessibility Checker

Accessibility Checker Functionality Overview

Table of contents

Running Accessibility Checker

You can enable Accessibility Checker by clicking the Check Accessibility Accessibility Checker icon toolbar button. Once the button is clicked, Accessibility Checker will perform a very quick checking process. Typically it takes a fraction of a second. Depending on the result, Accessibility Checker will switch to checking mode or inform you that the document contains no accessibility issues.

Issues Found — Checking Mode

When Accessibility Checker finds some issues, it will display a panel containing the tools needed for understanding and solving the problem.

Accessibility Checker in a checking mode

Accessibility problems are presented as one issue at a time, allowing you to iterate over the entire list. Issues can also be ignored (see the Ignoring Issues). For more information about checking mode please refer to the Checking Mode section.

No Issues

If no issues were found in the document, Accessibility Checker will inform you about it.

Dialog shown when no issues are found

This means that your content is validated.

What Exactly Are Issues?

An issue represents a single accessibility problem in your content, as defined by your checking engine. Issue are grouped into different types.

Issue Types

In checking mode the highlight color will slightly differ in order to hint the issue type.

Checking Mode

Checking mode is enabled when there is at least one issue in the content. It shows a panel containing all key information about the currently focused issue.

It is designed for:

The checking mode will work on a single issue at a time, allowing you to iterate over all issues found in the document.

The following picture will highlight the most important parts of the panel shown in the checking mode.

Checking mode panel with highlighted parts

Multiple ways to navigate over issues are available.

Use the Previous or Next buttons in the Accessibility Checker panel to move between issues.

Navigation using the Next button

Clicking a Selected Issue

Since issues are highlighted in CKEditor, you can click an issue with your mouse. It will focus the first issue within the selected element. The possibility to focus an issue is indicated by a hightlight and a cursor change.

Navigation using the mouse

Using the Keyboard

You can also use the keyboard to move across issues. A few keyboard shortcuts were defined to make navigation easy and intuitive.

Please refer to the Keyboard Shortcuts section for a complete list of available keystrokes.

Using Quick Fixes

Quick Fix is a powerful feature designed to solve issues as quickly as possible, without leaving the Accessibility Checker panel.

There are two Quick Fix types:

Working with Quick Fixes

Depending on the Quick Fix type, two approaches are possible.

Automatic Quick Fix

For automatic Quick Fixes your job comes down to pressing the Quick Fix button in the Accessibility Checker panel.

Automatic Quick Fix example

Once the button is pressed, the fix is applied. This will result in a change of the HTML source of your content.

Semi-Automatic Quick Fix

A semi-automatic Quick Fix requires some action from the user, typically requested by a form text input in the Accessibility Checker panel.

For example:

Semi-automatic Quick Fix example

Initially this image has no alternative text so Quick Fix asks the user to provide it as it is unable to determine this automatically.

User Input Validation

Quick Fixes are also smart enough to validate the user input data if needed.

For example, it is recommended that an alternative text for an image should be shorter than 100 characters. If the user enters a text that is longer than 100 characters into the "Alternative Text" field and tries to apply it with a Quick Fix, Accessibility Checker will raise an error warning the user that the text is too long.

Invalid user-provided data causes a validation error

Adding Quick Fixes

Quick Fix feature was created with extensibility in mind, so it is very easy for a developer to add new, custom Quick Fixes to Accessibility Checker.

Ignoring Issues

Issues reported by Accessibility Checker can also be ignored. This can be done by clicking the Ignore button for each selected issue in the Accessibility Checker panel.

Issue ignore button

If an issue is ignored, it will gain very subtle highlight which no longer indicates the initial issue type, as shown below.

Ignored issue higlighting

It is still possible to open Accessibility Checker on an ignored issue by clicking it, by navigating to it with your keyboard or moving to it from the previous or next issue.

Once the issue is ignored you can also unset its ignore status by clicking the Stop ignoring button.

Stop ignoring button

Switching to Listening Mode

When you wish to introduce some manual changes to your content, Accessibility Checker will switch to listening mode, waiting for your changes to be done.

There are two ways of switching Accessibility Checker to listening mode after its initial activation:

Listening Mode

Listening mode is enabled when you want to make a quick change to the document.

In listening mode Accessibility Checker minimizes itself and waits until you are finished editing your content. Listening mode will put the following indicator in the bottom right-hand corner of your browser:

Listening mode indicator

When you are done with your changes you can return to checking the content by clicking the Check again button.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Accessibility Checker comes with good keyboard support. The following table describes default keystrokes and actions assigned to them.

Keyboard Shortcuts for Windows / Linux

Command Keystroke Restrictions
Open/Close Accessibility Checker Ctrl+Alt+E
Next Issue Ctrl+E Checking mode only
Previous Issue Ctrl+Shift+E Checking mode only
Close Accessibility Checker Esc
Switch to listening mode Shift+Esc Checking mode only
Switch to checking mode Shift+Esc Listening mode only

Keyboard Shortcuts for Mac

Command Keystroke Restrictions
Open/Close Accessibility Checker Command+Option+E
Next Issue Command+E Checking mode only
Previous Issue Command+Shift+E Checking mode only
Close Accessibility Checker Esc
Switch to listening mode Shift+Esc Checking mode only
Switch to checking mode Shift+Esc Listening mode only

Please note that the predefined keyboard shortcuts can be changed with the custom configuration.

Contact us:

Toll-free (US/CAN): +1 800 820 4009 Internationally: +1 650 521 9065 sales@cksource.com

Working hours: 1am-3pm PST, 4am-6pm EST, 10am-12am CET