Re: Balancing the myth-busting.

Hi Tina,

>  Making a case against automated testing while using the tools
>  incorrectly is an interesting practice.

You're absolutely correct, but that was the point I was trying to
make. Developers are encouraged to separate structure, presentation,
and behaviour. Unfortunately, the free testing tools only validate the
markup. People subscribed to this list will understand that, but I
work with people who have more faith in validators than their own
understanding, and will remove accessibility features because a
validator says there's an error which there clearly isn't, or will
believe something is okay, despite it being an obvious error. It's
these people that the article is aimed at.

Accessibility validators are useful, but all the time they only
evaluate markup, are very limited. Also, the context could never be
known for sure, which is always going to be a problem with automated
testing. The W3C's markup validator can ensure the document conforms
to a DTD, but couldn't know for sure whether the most appropriate
elements for the content had been chosen. Similarly, the presence of
attribute values can be checked, but their relevance cannot easily be
determined.

Best regards,

Gez

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Received on Tuesday, 9 August 2005 07:47:56 UTC