Authoring Tools

Web authoring tools assist designers and developers design and create web pages, web or multimedia applications. In simple term, it refers to what most developers call What you see is what you get (WYSIWYG) editors for creating HTML/XHTML or even XML content.

Authoring tools provide web authors different functionality to create different web content functionality with a click of button. For example, some authoring tools provide developers with writing a complex form code by just taking textual inputs.

Authoring tools enable the developers save or transform the format of the web pages according to requirements. For example, save the web content in formats such as:

• HyperText Markup Language (HTML)
• Extensible HyperText Markup Language (XHTML)
• Extensible Markup Language (XML)
• Portable Document Format (PDF)
• Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP)
• Active Server Pages (ASP)

Authoring tools also include tools that enable web masters to develop and maintain websites. Emerging tools also enable developers to create websites dynamically through databases. With the help of authoring tools, a web developer can easily create accessible web content.

Apart from creating accessible content using authoring tools, the authoring tools also need to be accessible to all, irrespective to the type of disabilities. For more information on this, refer to the Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 (External Website).

In this section, we will cover the most popular authoring tools that are used to create accessible web content such as:

• Adobe Professional
• Microsoft Office
• Captioning