I would like to check a webpage for 508 compliance (alt text, titles, etc.,.). I found this list. What worked for you in the past? Any lessons learned? Also, I am using the IBM Rational Suite (i.e IBM Rational Functional Tester). Any tools that you can call to verify compliance? I am thinking webrat but for java.
EDITED: Added link to webrat and 508 compliance.
While there are tools out there to test for compliance, I find they all fall short of actually making pages that adhere to the spirit of section 508.
The Rational suite should be able to find obvious errors, like missing alt text, or tables without descriptions, but it can't tell you if the images have good alt text. An example from my work:
Whenever a content editor would insert an image, they had to give it a caption, which appeared right below the image, and alt text, which only screen readers would see. Most of them would simply copy and paste the caption text into the alt text field. A blind person would then hear the caption twice, which isn't useful at all.
When our tester found this, he failed us, even though there was alt text. The spirit and the letter of 508c states that all the data should be available for all the users, and that picture was most certainly not available.