Advancement · Communications

Before you send it,
find who it shuts out.

Paste the draft of a newsletter, an appeal or an invitation. The page lists the barriers it is sure of, the choices that need your eye, and the shade of your own color that would pass.

Check a draft What you get

$12one-time · every device you sign in on

Buy · $12

Included with Caveat Classroom and Whole-school licenses. Or get it in the Development and giving kit, $39 for 19 items.

The checker

The worked example is a made-up gala invitation with 5 things to fix and 11 to review. Paste your own draft over it, or start blank.

Loading the tool. If nothing appears, turn on JavaScript.

What you get

Advancement · Communications$12 · included with Classroom and Whole-school licenses

What you finish with: A list of findings for one piece, sorted into barriers to fix and choices to review, each with the reason, the place in the draft, the fix and the WCAG 2.2 success criterion or practice behind it; the reading grade against a target; the contrast ratio of every pair in a brand palette, with the nearest shade that reaches 4.5 to 1; and a checklist for what software cannot see, by kind of piece. Prints a report and downloads the findings as a spreadsheet.
Who it is for: Development, advancement and communications staff at schools and nonprofits, executive directors who write their own appeals, event planners, and parent group and board volunteers who send the newsletter. No technical background needed; pasting the HTML of an email is optional and checks more.
Format: Browser tool. Paste text or HTML; findings update as you type. Prints a report; downloads findings (.csv); export and import a file.
Access: $12 one-time, yours on every device you sign in on; the tool opens once you are signed in with it. Included with Caveat Classroom and Whole-school licenses. Also in the Development and giving kit ($39) and the Advancement Suite pass ($99), and 1 more bundle. Everything you type stays in this browser; nothing is sent to Caveat.
Where it lives: The Communications space in Caveat Advancement.
Support: Questions, a correction or a request: team@caveatacademic.com.

How to use it

Choose what the piece is and paste the draft. For an email or a web page, paste its HTML if you can get it (most email tools have a view of the code); the page then checks images, links, headings, tables and colors too.
Work down the findings. Fix the first group; decide on the second. Edit the draft in the box and the list updates.
Open Colors, enter your brand colors, and read which pairs can carry body text. Where a pair falls short, the page gives the nearest shade that passes.
Open Checklist and tick what you have confirmed by hand: alt text on social images, captions, the accommodation line.
Print the report, or download the findings, for whoever fixes the template.

Check a draft

How the checks work

Two of them are arithmetic. The rest look for patterns that are known barriers.

The example’s button: white on amber is 2.01 to 1 and fails; navy on the same amber is 6.03 to 1 and passes. Below, the reading grade of the example text.

Contrast

Each color is turned into a relative luminance from 0 (black) to 1 (white), using the formula in WCAG 2.2. The contrast ratio is the lighter luminance plus 0.05, divided by the darker plus 0.05, so it runs from 1 to 1 up to 21 to 1. Body text needs 4.5 to 1. Large text, 18 point or 14 point bold, needs 3 to 1.

For a pair that falls short, the page changes the lightness of one color a step at a time, keeping its hue, and reports the first shade that reaches the ratio. In pasted HTML only colors written in the tags can be seen; a color that comes from a stylesheet is out of view.

Reading grade

The grade is the Flesch-Kincaid estimate: 0.39 times the words per sentence, plus 11.8 times the syllables per word, minus 15.59. Reading ease is the companion score out of 100, where higher is easier. Syllables are counted by rule, so treat the grade as within about a grade either way and do not rate fewer than a hundred words too finely.

WCAG asks, at its highest level, for a version that does not need more than a lower secondary reading level. The default target of grade 9 follows that; set it lower for a general audience.

What it cannot see

Whether alt text is any good, whether a video has captions, whether the venue has a ramp. Automatic checks catch a share of barriers, not all of them; the Checklist tab holds the rest, and people with disabilities who read your drafts will find what both miss. Nothing here is a legal review or a statement that a piece conforms to WCAG.

Sources

W3C. Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2, W3C Recommendation. Success criteria 1.1.1, 1.3.1, 1.4.1, 1.4.3, 1.4.5, 2.4.4, 2.5.8, 3.1.1 and 3.1.5, and the definitions of relative luminance and contrast ratio.
Kincaid, J. P., Fishburne, R. P., Rogers, R. L., & Chissom, B. S. (1975). Derivation of new readability formulas for Navy enlisted personnel (Research Branch Report 8-75). Naval Technical Training Command. The grade level formula. Flesch, R. (1948). A new readability yardstick. Journal of Applied Psychology, 32(3), 221–233. Reading ease.
Plain Language Action and Information Network. Federal Plain Language Guidelines (plainlanguage.gov). Short sentences and everyday words.
ADA National Network. A Planning Guide for Making Temporary Events Accessible to People With Disabilities. Access information and accommodation requests in event materials.
American Council of the Blind. Best Practices and Guidelines for Large Print Documents. The 18 point size for large print.

The worked example is made up, including the organization, the event and the colors. The checks are a first pass and not a legal review; passing them does not mean a piece conforms to WCAG or meets any law. Drafts stay in this browser, and pasted HTML is read without loading or running anything in it. Support: team@caveatacademic.com.

Before you send it,find who it shuts out.