Functional Accessibility Evaluator, version 2.0.0

Development is primarily supported by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The development is lead by Accessible IT Group which is a unit of Disability Resources and Educational Servcies which is part fo the College of Applied Health Sciences. Additional contributions for the HTMLUnit based web site analysis engine are provided by Administrative Information Technology Services (ATIS) of University Administration.

What is Functional Accessibility Evaluator (FAE)?

• FAE analyzes a website based on the requirements of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 Single A and AA Success Criteria.
• Every rule used in FAE 2.0 references at primary WCAG 2.0 Success Criterion requirement it is based on.
• The rules support not only accessibility, but also usable web design for people with disabilities.
• The rules support accessible and usable design by enforcing the accessible coding practices and techniques of the Accessible Rich Internet Application (ARIA) 1.0 and W3C HTML5 specifications.

Apache 2.0 License

FAE may be used and distributed based on the terms and conditions of the Apache License Version 2.0.

Server requirements

• Apache2 Web Server
• Python 2.7.x
• Java 1.8
• Python development package (python-dev in Debian/Ubuntu)
• postgresql-devel (libpq-dev in Debian/Ubuntu)

Python modules

Here is the [requirements.txt] file to use with pip

  Django==1.9
  django-password-reset==0.9
  django-registration==2.0.4
  django-timezone-field==1.3
  future==0.15.2
  Markdown==2.6.5
  psycopg2==2.6.1
  pytz==2015.7
  requests==2.10.0

Creating a secrets.json file

The "secretes.json" file must be created and provides:

• Security information for Django
• Information for Django to access and manage the database
• Information on on e-mail commmunications for registration and announcements.
• Place this file in the [absolute path]/fae2/fae2 directory

{
  	"FILENAME": "secrets.json",
    "SITE_URL": "[your site URL]",
    "SITE_NAME": "FAE 2.0",
    "PROCESSING_THREADS": 4, 
   	"SECRET_KEY": "",
    "SELF_REGISTRATION_ENABLED": true,
    "ANONYMOUS_REPORTS_ENABLED": true,
    "SHIBBOLETH_ENABLED": false,
    "SHIBBOLETH_URL": "",
    "SHIBBOLETH_NAME": "",
    "SHIBBOLETH_SUPERUSER": "",
    "DEBUG": false,
    "LOGGER_LEVEL": "INFO",
   	"DATABASE_HOST": "[ip address]",
   	"DATABASE_PORT": "[port]",
   	"DATABASE_NAME": "[DB name]",
    "DATABASE_USER": "[DB username]",
    "DATABASE_PASSWORD": "[DB password]",
    "ALLOWED_HOSTS": ["[your site URL]"],
    "EMAIL_HOST": "[mailserver]",
    "EMAIL_PORT": 587,
    "EMAIL_USE_TLS": true,
    "EMAIL_HOST_USER": "[email]",
    "EMAIL_HOST_USER_PASSWORD": "[mail password]",
    "ACCOUNT_ACTIVATION_DAYS" : 3,
    "CONTACT_EMAIL" : "[email]"
    "ADMIN_USER_NAME" : "[username]",
    "ADMIN_FIRST_NAME" : "[first name]",
    "ADMIN_LAST_NAME" : "[last name]",
    "ADMIN_PASSWORD": "[admin password]",
    "ADMIN_EMAIL": "[email]",
    "ANNONYMOUS_PASSWORD" : "[annonymous password]",
    "DEFAULT_ACCOUNT_TYPE" : 2    
}

Apache 2.0 configuration notes

• MOD_WSGI must be installed and support Python 2.7
• Helpful MOD_WSGI Resources
  • Deploy a python3.4-based Django project on Centos 6.5 with mod_wsgi: doable?
  • How to deploy a python3 wsgi application with apache2 and debian
  • How To Serve Django Applications with Apache and mod_wsgi on CentOS 7
  • How to Run Django with mod_wsgi and Apache with a virtualenv Python environment on a Debian VPS

Example Apache configuration gile

<VirtualHost *:80 >
	     Servername  fae.[domain]
	     ServerAlias fae.[domain]

  Alias /static [absolute path]/fae2/fae2/static/

  <Directory [absolute path]/fae2/fae2/static>
    Require all granted
  </Directory>

  <Directory [absolute path]/fae2>
    <Files wsgi.py>
     Require all granted
    </Files>
  </Directory>

  WSGIDaemonProcess fae2 python-path=[absolute path]/fae2/:[absolute path]/virtual-en
vironments/fae2/lib/python3.4/site-packages/
  WSGIProcessGroup  fae2
  WSGIScriptAlias [absolute path]/fae2/fae2/wsgi.py
</VirtualHost>

Setting up fae directories for read/write access

• Need to create "data/" with write permissions for fae-util, typically "root"
• Need to create "logs/" with write permissions for "apache" user

Multiple Django Apps and mod_wsgi

• Configuring wsgi.py for multiple Django apps

Initialize database tables

• You will need to run python manage.py migrate to create the tables in the database
• After the tables in the database are created, go to the "populate" directory
• In the populate directory run python pop_all.py to initialize the tables

fae-util configuration and testing

• Purpose of fae-util
  • fae-util is a server based browser emulator based on HTMLUnit
  • It monitors the database waiting for evaluation requests
  • When it identifes a request it will then load web pages and analyze them using the OpenAjax Evaluation Library
  • Each page evaluation results in a JSON file being crerated with the results
  • After all pages are analyzed the information in the JSON files is moved to the database
• Testing fae-util
  • Go to the "fae-util" directory
  • Use ./run -c test.properties to test if the utility is properly installed and configured
  • It will output URL processing information to the console
  • It will create a directory called "test" that contains *.json files of evaluaiton results
  • NOTE: You must delete the "test" directory to rerun this test (e.g. directory exists error will occur)
• Creating a service to run evaluation requests
  • IMPORTANT: Must run fae-util/python process_evaluation_requests.py to process website evaluations in the background
  • There are a number of ways to make this program run in parallel with django application depending on your operating system
    • Linux: How to write a System V init script to start, stop, and restart my own application or service(http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/linux-write-sys-v-init-script-to-start-stop-service.html)

Utility to clean up reports and update summary statistics

• IMPORTANT: Must run fae-util/process_achive_reports.py to process remove reports and update summary statistics
• Create cron job to run a shell script once a day
• The shell script contains the following command lines:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
/python /process_achive_reports.py

Shibboleth Configuration

To enable shibboleth support for your institution or organization you need your service manager to enable the following attributes to the entityID identifying the installation of FAE with Shibboleth Support (e.g. "https://fae.illinois.edu/shibboleth" for the University of Illinois campus):

• eppn
• giveName
• sn
• mail

Enityt IDs: [https://www.incommon.org/federation/info/all-entities.html#IdPs]

Testing e-mail on localhost development

• Use a python utitlity to simulate an SMTP server: python -m smtpd -n -c DebuggingServer localhost:1025
• Configure e-mail in "secretes.json" with the following values:

    ....
    "EMAIL_HOST": "localhost",
    "EMAIL_PORT": 1025,
    "EMAIL_USE_TLS": false,
    "EMAIL_HOST_USER": "None",
    "EMAIL_HOST_USER_PASSWORD": "None",
    ....

SELinux issues (e.g. CENTOS, REDHAT)

FAE directory permissions

• Need to set application permissions on fae2 files to allow apache to execute the python scripts
• Need to set application permissions on "fae2/logs" and "fae2/data" directories to allow reading and writing ([http://www.serverlab.ca/tutorials/linux/web-servers-linux/configuring-selinux-policies-for-apache-web-servers/])

Self registration and sendmail configuration

• Enable send mail
  • [http://tecadmin.net/install-sendmail-server-on-centos-rhel-server/
  • [https://sachinsharm.wordpress.com/2013/08/19/setting-up-sendmail-on-centosrhel-6-3/]
  • [http://wpguru.co.uk/2015/04/how-to-open-smtp-port-587-to-send-emails-in-plesk/]
• If you are using self registration make sure you enable Apache to send emails using sendmail ([http://www.sufinawaz.com/selinux-apache-sendmail/])
• Setup e-mail on CENTOS 7 operating system ([http://www.krizna.com/centos/setup-mail-server-centos-7/])

Development Resources

Django Shibboleth Resources

• How to (not) use Shibboleth with the Django web framework

Incommon Resources (Multi-Institution Shibboleth)

• InCommon: Embedded Discovery Service
• Technology Services: Shibboleth, Multi-university configuration
• InCommon: Federation Entities