Re: The Cult of Pseudo Accessibility (Bobby: suggested improvements)

James Craig wrote:

> Geoff Deering wrote:
> As a programmer, building a validator that includes a JavaScript 
> interpreter seems like an enourmously daunting task. You mentioned you 
> were talking about changes that were "darn right easy to do."

I just replied to this in my post to David Wooley

> Have you been watching the progress of the WAIzilla project? That where 
> I'd start if you want that kind of functionality. Get involved in the 
> project and help develop a better one. I suppose you might be able to 
> modify the validator to work in conjunction with the DOM inspector, but 
> even leveraging the tools available, it's a daunting task.

Thanks for that, I'll follow it up.  I do have trouble keeping up with 
all these things.  Hopefully this will show how it should be done, but 
Mozilla Composer still doesn't impress me that there has been any move 
or redesign based on a decent rules based engine.

> Well I believe at least one Watchfire developer is on this list. I've 
> mentioned specific validation problems here before and they were fixed 
> quite promptly.

Well I hope they are listening.

> If you have some specific milestones in mind, you might mention them 
> here. Start small and be constructive. Since I'm not involved in the 
> Bobby project, I was able to read through your frustration and 
> understand your concerns. I'm afraid I may not have been as receptive to 
> your ideas had I been involved; I probably would have been put-off by 
> your initial tone.

Fair enough, but as I have stated if this was an open source volunteer 
effort I do not carry this tone of address, I tend to be very supportive 
and helpful (I think, I could be completely wrong), but when its a 
business, and this product has had an extremely long history of issues 
that remain outstanding, it is generating income for a company and still 
falls short of a good level of quality accreditation, and they have 
experienced all the nice interface of the WAI community, it's about time 
someone gave them a polite shake to wake them up.  After all this time 
it seems to me that nothing is waking these people out of their stupor.

But if it is not appropriate to address these issues with such strong 
language and vigor, I will refrain from addressing product issues on 
this list.  I'm happy to do that for the sake of the list and take my 
issues about products and the damage they are causing elsewhere.  That's 
fair enough (please email me if you think that is appropriate, I won't 
be offended).

> I suggest you start a new thread with a subject like: "Bobby: suggested 
> improvements" to get their attention in case they missed this thread. 
> Remember, be constructive. I'm not trying to patronize by repeating 
> that, but I realize how easy it is to be overly-critical. I do it too 
> often, to mixed reception.

I tend to as well, but for all these years it seems to have little 
effect on addressing these issues, and I am becoming very frustrated 
with the rising cult of pseudo accessibility that the lethegy of these 
products QA perpetuates.

Geoff Deering

Received on Wednesday, 10 December 2003 20:16:51 UTC