The WAI-Tools Project aspired to the ambitious goal of advancing the entire field of web accessibility evaluation and repair, and thereby help advancing web accessibility generally from the bottom up. Specifically, WAI-Tools aimed to address many of the core criticisms from researchers and practitioners regarding web accessibility evaluation and repair tools by building a foundation of transparency and trust. This provided a common basis and platform for building innovative products and services that advance the current state-of-the-art, which is essential to help make the web accessible to people with disabilities. Some of the specific achievements beyond the State of the Art include:
• Promote common understanding of accessibility – by documenting test procedures in form of ACT Rules, the project contributes towards more transparency and openness in web accessibility testing. Implementation, validation, and comparison of these test rules in the consensus process of W3C leads to more consistent understanding and interpretation of the underlying accessibility requirements. The WAI-Tools Project contributed to an initial set of 72 rules to help initiate this broad international effort.
• Advance web accessibility evaluation methods – by providing open, reliable, and authoritative test rules, developers of web accessibility evaluation tools and methodologies can focus their effort on innovation beyond the current state-of-the-art. For example, recent advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning can help increase the level of automation in testing, provided that vendors can rely on a common interpretation of the requirements rather than needing to continually re-define their own interpretation without authoritative guidance from W3C.
• Improve interoperability in web accessibility – by ensuring consistent results from different tools and methodologies, website owners are not locked to particular vendors. Results from different sources and over time become more comparable, ensuring a more open eco-system for the Web. At the same time, developers of tools and methodology are continually encouraged to innovate, to maintain their customers and address their growing demand for interoperability.
• Contribute to open data on web accessibility – also by ensuring consistent results from different sources and over time, more comparable data on web accessibility can be made broadly available. For example, to support longitudinal and large-scale surveys across entire regions, such as the EU.
• Improve accessibility for people with disabilities – by improving accessibility testing tools and methodology, ultimately people with disabilities will benefit from a more accessible Web.
