RE:Reporting of accessibility problems

         Reply to:   RE:Reporting of accessibility problems
Harvey,

Thanks for the summary, I'll be interested to hear how other people respond.

I think one of the other issues  to raise is that not all of the guidelines are readily quantifiable by a computer program.

Also, we are abandoning the four star rating system in favor of pass/fail based on the analogous argument: "1 step or 100 steps, it's still inaccessible."

David Clark
CAST, Inc.
 On 3/9/98, Harvey Bingham wrote:
>Summary: How should the WAI accessibility guidelines be integrated >into >accessibility analysis and reporting tools like Bobby.
>
>The WAI Accessibility guidelines, with Required and Recommended >problem >severity, should be the basis for a measure of URL accessibility. >What measure should we recommend:
>
>1. Should any failing of a Required guideline in the content of a URL >   report that URL as an accessibility failure?
>
>2. Should any failing of a Recommended guideline report a warning?
>
>3. Should summary counts of total failings and warnings be in the report?
>
>4. Should further breakdown of summary counts be by kind?
>
>Current Bobby uses an opaque algorithm to rank a URL as 1 to 4 stars. >Most results are either 1 star (bad) or 4 stars (assertedly accessible).
> >Sites that generate frame content (by script, applet, or activeX-control)
>may have nothing in the body for Bobby to analyze, so may get 4 stars, >even though they may be totally inaccessible.
>
>5. Should the amount of accessible material be factored into the report?
>
>6. Is there a tactful way to make such reports to sites other than your >own?
>
>Background:
>
>My prior attempts at reporting Bobby results to different companies have >been minimally effective, even though I provided summaries of the >problems
>encountered, encouraged Bobby use, and showed how to use it: >
>*   Two passes three months apart over the home pages of about 50 >SGML >    Open member companies (showing most had problems, and a trend >for >    more getting worse than getting better, as their web pages evolved >    into more layout-intensive graphics, frames, imagemaps, and layout >    tables.)
>
>*   One pass over the home pages of all the companies supporting the >Microsoft
>    Content Data Format. I sent this to key players at Microsoft for further
>    distribution. No one at Microsoft acknowledged that combined report.
>
>Josh Krieger says he will soon be revising Bobby analysis to recognize >the >problems identified in the accessibility guidelines.
>
>The questions I pose above should help with that new Bobby analysis.
>
>Regards/Harvey Bingham
>
>
>
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Received on Tuesday, 10 March 1998 09:12:06 UTC