Before going any further, it is very important to review this principle:
You cannot guarantee accessibility with any technical tool.
The WCAG2.0aa guidelines, the principles of accessibility, and the RANCH rules CANNOT be adequately tested with a technical tool. The WAVE tool cannot test all WAI-ARIA compatibility. The WAVE tool cannot by itself test accessibility compliance.
It takes a knowledgable human to test your website for accessibility compliance.
Technical tools can definitely help with testing for compliance but cannot and should not be the sole determining test as to whether a website is technically compliant.
The WAVE tool will help you get a handle on certain aspects of accessibility compliance. The WAVE tool is very good at:
The WAVE tool is not great at:
Remember: Just because the WAVE tool finds no errors on your website does not mean you are accessible.
To use the WAVE tool:
The results screen is broken in to two main portions: The left hand “report” pane and the main body “results” pane.
The main body of the page is the results pane. The Results pane is the website you entered with some special markup that corresponds to results. The markups are clickable and will tell you what results is associated with each markup. These markup results will help you narrow down possible areas of inaccessibility on your website.
Make sure to check the Contrast tab at the top as well. Contrast is not an optional compliance. In order to be accessible, a web page cannot have contrast concerns.