Accessibility Tools
Third-party accessibility tools can help ensure that your website meets essential guidelines.
Begin by obtaining a Siteimprove account — available to all University of California employees. Bookmark UC San Diego’s Brand website to preview and test accessible color combinations.
Take time to experiment with the other tools listed below to determine which might be most helpful to you in creating accessible content.
Amazing free tools at your fingertips
Siteimprove Accessibility Testing
Siteimprove is an online service that systematically reviews your websites for accessibility and site quality issues. Siteimprove crawls registered sites and reports accessibility errors and how to fix them. Siteimprove also offers free training, and all of this is free to UC San Diego users under a UC-wide license.
UC San Diego Accessible Brand Color Combinations
Test to see if your text and background colors meet WCAG contrast and legibility standards. This is a customized version of the WebAIM Contrast Checker (linked below), where the options are all acceptable colors within the UC San Diego brand guidelines.
Screen readers
Screen readers are software applications that translate visual information into audible speech. Text is read aloud by a synthesized voice so that sight-impaired users can navigate the website, form, or other application.
NVDA (for Windows)
Test your content using this free, open source, screen reader for the blind and vision-impaired.
VoiceOver (for Mac)
See how your content fares using the screen-reading technology integrated into Apple/Mac operating systems.
Other helpful tools
Color Contrast Checker (WebAIM)
Plug in any combination of text and background colors to test whether it meets WCAG contrast and legibility standards.
Hemingway Readability Checker
Paste in your text, and the app suggests clearer, more readable language.