In 2021, we will launch WCAG EM Report Tool 3.0.0 (latest preview). It brings the tool in line with the most recent W3C/WAI website redesign, and is rebuilt from scratch.

On this page, you can find the differences between version 2 and version 3 (summary of changes, changes per page).

The most obvious changes in version 3 are:

• simplified UI, also follows current WAI website design conventions
• added Markdown support for observations, so that you can add code examples, images, links and more
• improved performance
• added progress bars per principle to see project completion at a glance

• Add WAI header, footer, grid, typography, colors, spacing (by including the WAI stylesheet)
• Use WAI Design Components for success criterion, expand/collapse, links to external sources (like Understanding docs and WCAG-EM steps), Your Report
• In audit step, update “Sample to evaluate”: make it visually look like filters and rename to “Add results for pages”
• Move filters for WCAG Version and Levels to a sidebar to establish more visual connection between the filters and the filtered
• Summary of results on View Report page, which displays per result category (“Passed”, “Failed” etc)

• Import of assertions, for instance from automated tests (format: EARL as JSON-LD)
• Markdown support in all multiline fields (textareas), so that evaluators can add structure, lists, code examples and images. “Support” technically means the contents are parsed as Markdown in the report.
• Addition of the WAI “Help improve this page” box, with direct links to “Fork & Edit on GitHub” and “New GitHub Issue”
• “Your Report” box to show the name of the project and how many Success Criteria were evaluated in real time, and how many there are given selected WCAG version and conformance target. Helpful for those importing to know what they've imported.
• The report preview has “Edit” buttons, that let you edit in line (for meta info) or jump to the audit page (for Success Criteria)

• Updated list of technologies (see https://github.com/w3c/wcag-em-report-tool/issues/390)

• Content, except for details listed below

• Heading ‘What this tool does’ removed, heading ‘Overview’ added; this matches the ATAG Report Tool and name of the page in the navigation, and it describes the content below sufficiently
• Added “Open report” and “New Report” buttons

• Fields

• Sentence “More guidance on this step is provided in WCAG-EM Step 1: Define the Evaluation Scope.”, replaced by a button-like link “Step 1: Define the Evaluation Scope“ (using WAI's Resource Link component)

• Fields
• Content

• Updated list of technologies (see https://github.com/w3c/wcag-em-report-tool/issues/390)
• Mechanism to add technology. Was: check “Other”, see field appear, use field. Now: field is always exposed
• Sentence “More guidance on this step is provided in …”, replaced by a button-like link (using WAI's Resource Link

• Fields
• Content

• Essential functionality and Variety of web pages was expand/collapse, no longer is.
• “Add web page“ uses slightly different UI

• Success criteria are displayed with “Outcome” and “Observation” fields, which can also be added for each page in the sample.
• Filters exist for WCAG version and conformance target

• Removed “Note” paragraph that explains how to use the sample to evaluate box. Rationale: confuses more than it helps
• Box “sample to evaluate“: removed info icon, renamed box to “Add results to pages”. Removed functionality to open all selected pages, and functionality set individual pages to completed and uncompleted. Rationale: we suspect these features are little used; with less features and a different label, this function should be easier to understand.
• Added box “supplement this report from other (automated) tests”
• Remove heading “Success Criteria to Evaluate Info” and info icon with collapsed info on what to do; this declutters the UI to help the user orient.
• Use WAI styles for the success criterion, external links and form fields.
  • Use a larger textarea for observations that supports Markdown and include “View in report” link for previewing the observation. This mimicks behaviour in the ATAG Report Tool.
  • Display full Success Criterion text, with 'show full description' if it contains a list. This mimicks behavior in WCAG QuickRef.

• Fields
• Content

• Sentence “More guidance on this step is provided in …”, replaced by a button-like link (using WAI's Resource Link

• Report is previewed

• Visual design: box around report is removed, report no longer separate from “download and customise this report box”
• Introductory text and box around download buttons removed, to declutter and mimick ATAG Report Tool
• Stylesheet download removed. Name of the remaining download buttons changed to match those in ATAG Report Tool. HTML and JSON download are now both referred to as “Download Report”, removing the word “Evaluation” and potentially reducing cognitive load (in the existing report tool, HTML was “Download evaluation report”, JSON was “Save evaluation data”).
• There are now edit buttons with each section, they allow edit in place (meta fields) or link to the relevant part of the audit page (outcomes and observations)
• “Summary of the evaluation findings” renamed to “Executive Summary”
• A summary of results is displayed with X out of X (X = SCs checked, Y = total to check given the specified conformance target), results are also displayed separated by outcome (Passed, Failed etc). This allows to quickly see the totals. There is an expand/collapse for “Not checked”, to help the user find out which ones they may have forgotten to check. These link back to the relevant part of the Audit page. This mimicks the ATAG Report Tool.
• Results displayed in a table with a row per Success Criterion and cells for SC, Result and Observations.

• latest preview of 2021 redesign
• current WCAG-EM Report Tool
• work in progress - overview of project milestones and tasks contained within them
• issues tagged “fixed in 2021 redesign”; open issues that can be closed when the redesigned tool launches)
• issues tagged “priority 1” but not “fixed in 2021 redesign”; we should probably look at whether they still need to be fixed or can potentially be closed
• ATAG Report Tool; a similar tool, previously developed through EOWG with largely the same goals. A lot of the visual design and interaction patterns match.