Re: Bobby Approval

At 9:06 AM -0700 2001/6/28, Shoshana Billik wrote:
>         Hi, everyone!  I'm also new to the list and am wondering 
>what is "Bobby
>approval".

http://www.cast.org/bobby/

Bobby is one automated tool that can catch a lot of glaring accessibility
errors, but not necessarily all of them -- it especially can't catch those
errors which require human judgment.  For example, Bobby can check "Is
there an alt attribute for this image?" but it can't answer, "Is this an
_appropriate_ alt attribute for this image?"

That said, Bobby is still very useful and highly recommended.

"Bobby approval" means that if you pass one of Bobby's checks -- including
the questions they try to ask to cover things that require human judgment --
you can use a graphic on your web site that read "Bobby approved."

This is both a good and bad thing -- good because it heightens awareness
among people who see it, but bad because it's very easy for people to
get confused and think that "Bobby Approved" equals "WCAG Compliance"
equals "Section 508 Compliance" equals "Accessible to Any Given Person".

Those are all very different concepts, and care needs to be taken that
you don't say "Bobby Approval" when you mean "508 Compliance."

For example -- government RFPs should state "pages designed should meet
Section 508 requirements for web sites" and should NOT state merely
"pages designed should be Bobby-Approved".

--Kynn

-- 
Kynn Bartlett <kynn@reef.com>
Technical Developer Liaison
Reef North America
Accessibility - W3C - Integrator Network
Tel +1 949-567-7006
________________________________________
BUSINESS IS DYNAMIC. TAKE CONTROL.
________________________________________
http://www.reef.com

Received on Thursday, 28 June 2001 12:24:24 UTC