Administration

New University-wide web accessibility testing tool to be adopted July 1

Last day to access Compliance Sheriff will be June 30

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — On July 1, the Penn State enterprise accessibility testing application will change from Compliance Sheriff to the Functional Accessibility Evaluator (FAE), a web-based application developed by the University of Illinois.

FAE, and a companion product, AInspector toolbar, will be available to all University staff, faculty, and students who wish to test the accessibility of their public-facing websites. FAE 2.0 analyzes web pages for requirements referenced by Penn State's Policy AD69: Accessibility of Electronic and Information Technology.

The institutional license will allow individuals to create and archive multiple reports with scans of up to 100 individual web pages each, and to log in with their Penn State Access Account. The AInspector browser toolbar, along with other testing tools such as the WAVE toolbar, will allow testers to audit content on individual pages, including password-protected pages.

The last day to access Compliance Sheriff will be June 30 and the first day to access FAE with the institutional license will be July 1. Testers can currently access the free version of FAE until July 1 by visiting the FAE web page on the Penn State Accessibility website.

Note that the recommended accessibility testing protocol includes a user test with a screen reader, in addition to using a testing tool like FAE. To arrange user testing, or for any questions about Compliance Sheriff or FAE, email Penn State's IT accessibility team at accessibility@psu.edu.

Last Updated July 19, 2017