Re: Bobby 3.0 Beta

A bit of a rant, just the things I usually say (for those who have 
read or heard it before).

I think it is good that people who are using Bobby to evaluate their 
material are given the ful explanation. There are people who can write 
accessible HTML themselves without clearing it through Bobby. They don't 
need to be told what the issues are. There are other people who don't 
care. They don't use Bobby.

The people who do care, and are trying to learn, can only benefit from 
being presented with all the information. Although Bobby is not perfect 
it is very good, and probably covers more issues than most users of it 
would consider. Without the information they will still not consider it - 
if they keep seeing it, they can get into the habit of ensuring that the 
problems no longer arise from their material.

If people are looking for a quick pat on the back they are barking up the 
wrong tree. As Will Loughborough (Love) says, Accessibility is a right, 
not a privelige. So catering for it is a basic part of doing the job 
properly, not some added bonus. Bobby is an assistive tool, not the 
answer to all the questions a learner asks. Passing Bobby means that a 
site is likely to be accessible, not necessarily that it is. 

It would seem to me to be a great shame if being Bobby approved and HTML
validated was regarded as the end of accessible design. The proper end is
to produce material that is fully accessible. Bobby is a means which gives
feedback about some requirements which people commonly fail to meet. 

Charles McCathieNevile

> From:  John T. Whelan[SMTP:whelan@physics.utah.edu]
> Sent:  Tuesday, August 18, 1998 12:04 PM
> To:  w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
> Cc:  bbailey@clark.net; dmclark@cast.org
> Subject:  Re: hmmm
> 
> >So, what do people think of the new Bobby reporting format?
> 
> >Personally, I preferred the binary okay / not-okay-and-here-are-the-reasons
> >rating, even if such a quantifiable state was illusionary.  CAST has covered
> >their bases, and provides much more information, but I wish the extra
> >feedback was optional instead of default.
> 
> 	I think the recommendations, questions and tips are useful,
> since they may make people think of improvements that haven't occurred
> to them, such as the ABBR and ACRONYM tags.  As long as the pass/fail
> and errors come first, people who don't care about the rest don't need
> to scroll any farther.  One change that might be useful is to put the
> accessability rating at the top of the report, before the display of
> the page's contents.

Received on Wednesday, 19 August 1998 02:13:43 UTC