CAST Announces Beta of Bobby 3.0

Apologies for reposting, we forgot the subject line.
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CAST Announces Beta of Bobby 3.0

CAST (Center for Applied Special Technology) is pleased to announce the beta
release of a major upgrade to the Bobby web site (http://www.cast.org/bobby)
and the downloadable Bobby application. The Bobby web site is a free service
of CAST that will analyze single web pages for their accessibility to people
with disabilities. Bobby will also examine a page's HTML to see if it is
compatible with selected web browsers or HTML specifications.

The beta version of Bobby 3.0 is a major upgrade that replaces all previous
versions including Bobby 2.0 and 2.01. Both the site and the application
have an improved implementation of the working draft of the W3C's WAI Page
Authoring guidelines as well as reflecting the Page Authoring Working
Group's latest revisions. There is now a single Bobby Approval rating. Pages
that were previously Bobby Approved will continue to be Bobby Approved..

Major changes to the application include:
1.	An accessibility summary report for an entire web site making it easier
to fix the most pressing accessibility issues.
2.	The ability to export all of a web site's accessibility reports to a set
of HTML files for easy examination with your web browser.
3.	The ability to import a list of URLs for accessibility analysis.
4.	The ability to print accessibility and summary reports.
5.	Better control over how links are followed in the link finder.
6.	Rewritten using the JFC (Java Foundations Classes) to make the
application itself accessible to Java-based assistive technologies.


The Bobby Application will run under Windows 95/98/NT, Solaris, or any Java
1.1 compatible platform.  We are still completing support for a command line
interface.  It has not been implemented in this version.

A full release is expected in the middle of August.

Please remember that we are always looking for feedback, including bugs and
ideas for improvement.  Please email comments to bobby@cast.org.

About CAST: Founded in 1984, CAST is a not-for-profit organization whose
mission is to expand opportunities for all people-especially those with
disabilities-through the innovative uses of computer technology.

For more information, contact:

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

Received on Thursday, 30 July 1998 09:19:54 UTC