LIFT NN/g edition:
$549 software product from UsableNet, integrating Nielsen Norman Group's usability guidelines for improving usability for users with disabilities.
 

Summary

The main benefit of the software is that it analyzes your design while you develop it, so that you don't have to remember to consider accessibility as a separate step. The software is fully integrated as an extension to Macromedia Dreamweaver so any time you make a change to the design, it will check the usability for users with disabilities.

The software does most of the work for you. As you code web pages in Dreamweaver, the software:

• checks the pages for possible violations of the usability guidelines,
• alerts you to any problems,
• in some cases can fix the problems for you, and
• shows you an explanation of the relevant guideline
  • after referring to the usability research you can determine for yourself whether your design needs to be changed

(In addition to checking new pages as you code, you can also ask the software to scan through all of your existing pages and alert you to their potential usability problems.)

This is not a fully automated solution: only humans can judge whether a design has a usability problem. For example, a well-known guideline recommends adding ALT text to images, but only a human can determine whether the words in the ALT text will make any sense to a reader.

Still, even though the final design judgments have to be made by a human, there are immense benefits to having a software product look over your shoulder as you design web pages and alert you to possible violations of the usability guidelines for supporting users with disabilities.

There are a lot of usability guidelines to remember, especially in the area of helping users with disabilities. Because designers typically don't have any accessibility problems themselves, it is easy for them to forget some of the guidelines in the heat of developing new pages.
 

Platform

The code was developed by UsableNet and includes checks for technical accessibility (Section 508 and W3C rules) in addition to the usability guidelines. Please refer to UsableNet's website for technical support and more information about the product.

Unfortunately, the software will not help you if you use another development tool than Dreamweaver.
 

Active Hypertext

Every time there is a dubious element in your design, you get a link to the relevant guideline and explanations to help you determine whether to keep or change the element that was flagged.

The software gives you just-in-time guidelines when they apply to specific issues in your current design, overcoming the problem that many people don't have the time to read a 148-page report.

This software is also a reminder that hypertext goes far beyond what we currently see on the Web. The software makes user actions (your code) into the departure points for computationally determined links (the real-time analysis of potential usability problems in the code) to background content (the design guidelines and user research that we originally published as a traditional PDF document) and computer-operated actions (the automated fixes to some usability problems, such as making table and forms accessible, where the tools in the product can save hours over the normal hand-coding approach).
 

Who Should Buy This Software?

• Anybody who develops websites in Dreamweaver and wants to make the site accessible and usable for users with disabilities.

Get more info about the LIFT NN/g software.