Silktide is a powerful web governance platform that helps large organizations improve accessibility, content quality, user experience, privacy, and SEO.

The Web Team can provide you with access to the suite of tools offered by Silktide including scans for accessibility issues, spelling errors, broken hyperlinks, web standards issues, and more. Please contact the Web Team to be given access to Silktide.

Information is taken from the Silktide website.

There are several tools that can help you check your page for accessibility issues on the fly. Here are a few that we use;

Siteimprove Chrome Extension. The Siteimprove Accessibility Checker is your tool to evaluate any web page for accessibility issues at any given time. It provides intuitive, visual feedback about your content by highlighting detected issues right on the page and gives you: an immediate overview of your page’s accessibility issues, clear explanations of how they affect your users, plus specific recommendations on how to fix them.

Deque aXe Extension. Accessibility checker for WCAG 2 and Section 508 accessibility. Find accessibility defects on your website or web application by using the axe Chrome extension. Drop the axe on your accessibility defects!

Hemingway Editor App. The Hemingway App makes your writing bold and clear. It's like a spellchecker, but for style. It makes sure that your reader will focus on your message, not your prose. Too often, our words are like our thoughts — innumerable and disorganized. Almost any bit of writing could use some cutting. Less is more, etc.

Grammarly. Grammarly will make sure your messages, documents, and social media posts are clear, mistake-free, and impactful. Adding Grammarly to Chrome means that your spelling and grammar will be vetted on Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Tumblr, and nearly everywhere else you write on the web.

Silktide Disability Simulator - A browser plugin that helps develop accessible websites by simulating a range of experiences. Experience websites with a range of simulated disabilities, including: Color blindness, Dyslexia, Myopia, Blindness, and more.

There are some simple ways to manually review your pages for accessibility issues.

• Review the Alt Text of all images. When adding a new image or editing an existing image, it is now required that you enter an Alt Text. As the content of your page may change regularly, it's always best to review your images to ensure that the Alt Text is still relevant to the page.
• Review each hyperlink on the page. Simply visually scan through your page looking for any blue Hyperlinks and ensure that the hyperlink text is unique and clearly describes where the user will be taken.
• Test your site by using a keyboard only. By using the "tab" key you should be able to navigate through all of the features of your page in a logical order. You can also interact with those features by using the enter, space, and arrow keys.

The GVSU Web Team is continuously working towards becoming fully compliant and providing equal access to information for all of our users. That's a lofty goal, and we need your help. If you notice an accessibility issue on another site let us know! Use the Report an Accessibility Issue form to notify us and we'll work with that department to get the issue corrected as soon as we can.

If you're looking to have another set eyes to review your pages for accessibility issues or are simply interested in learning more about web accessibility, please don't hesitate to contact the Web Team and let us know how we can help.