Validation

Validation is basic requirement for web accessibility. If your website doesn’t validate to W3C standards, you may preventing assistive technology users from accessing your web pages. Syntax errors that do not affect the visual presentation of your page can hobble screen readers and other assistive technology. The particular W3C standard you validate to is not critical. You can validate your site to a variety of standards using the W3C Validator, which will give you a listing of errors and remediations.

The procedure

  1. Navigate to the W3C Validator website.

  2. On the W3C validator page, enter the URL of the page you want to validate in the text entry field and then click or press enter on the “Check” button:

    screen shot of w3c unicorn validator
  3. A web page will be displayed listing the syntax errors on your page:

    screen shot of w3c error listing page
  4. Scan down the list of errors. Each row contains the line and column number for each error, a snippet of the code in question, and the error description.

Note: Presently, the W3C validator will flag the WAI-ARIA role attribute, but this “error” is of no practical concern and will not interfere with the functionality of the page.

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