Re: Archive issue with the "Web Accessibility Report Tool"

G'day Hoylen,

Apparently this tool is not really maintained... So I am turning your  
request over to the systems people to figure out what to do with it, and  
to the new mailing list for the group who would have responsibility for it  
if they took some.

Not sure what will happen with it...

cheers

Chaals

On Mon, 19 Sep 2005 03:43:20 +0200, Hoylen Sue <hoylen@dstc.edu.au> wrote:

>
> G'day,
>
> I'm from the Australian W3C Office, and I have received a
> request from someone to get his name removed from a report
> that is in the wai-report-db mail archive [1].
>
> The problem he is having is that a Web search for his name
> reveals the WAI repot for his site as a search result --
> which can be embarassing for a Web developer.
>
>
> Firstly, can you accomodate him by doing so (modifying a
> page in the email archive)?
>
>
> Secondly, I think this raises a serious problem with the
> "Web Accessibility Report Tool" [2] because it keeps a
> permanent record of a site's faults (even long after the
> problems have been fixed) and makes it publically available.
> Someone could be using the tool during their own testing
> phase, to make their own site more accessible (yet it will
> keep the bad report around forever).  Someone malicious
> could also use it to generate bad publicity about other Web
> sites.  In comparison, the W3C HTML validation service does
> not keep a record of its results.
>
> One possible option is to make the wai-report-db mail
> archive member-only or at least un-indexable by search
> engines.  Minimally, there must be a clear disclosure that
> using the tool will generate a permanent and
> publically-available record of the report (not just an
> ephemeral email to the site owner, as the current text
> implies).  However, I suspect that the warning would
> discourage people from using the tool (I certainly want to
> try out the tool, but I certainly don't want a permanent bad
> record against my site). So a better solution than the
> minimal would be required.
>
>
> Please consider this issue, and get back to me -- so that I
> can respond and reply to that person's request.
>
> Thanks.
>
> Hoylen
>
> [1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/wai-report-db/
> [2] http://www.w3.org/WAI/report/



-- 
Charles McCathieNevile                      Fundacion Sidar
charles@sidar.org   +61 409 134 136    http://www.sidar.org

Received on Wednesday, 28 September 2005 20:37:28 UTC