Re: EARL 0.95 Available

At 09:05 AM 5/29/2001, Joe Clark wrote:
>Um... WTF is EARL, OK?

It's a language for making statements about the accessibility of
something, in a standard machine-readable (and human-displayable)
way.

For example:

* I could run a program like Bobby or the W3C validator, and get back
   a report in EARL which records those things Bobby or the validator
   can measure.

* I could sit down and test a site, and record my results in a format
   that gets changed into EARL (maybe by a script prompting me for
   answers).

* I could use a nifty new editor which, on demand, generates an EARL
   statement about the code it is creating for me.

* I could then combine all of the above EARL statements into a composite
   and see how the site measures up against various W3C specifications,
   such as WCAG or XHTML.  Failures to comply could also be noted in
   EARL as well.

EARL is "just" a common language and syntax for expressing things that
we current talk about in English, such as "this page is single-A accessible
and it includes D-links" or "this fails checkpoint 2.1" or "alt text
exists, but William Loughborough doesn't think they're adequate."
(The last one is not a tongue-and-cheek joke; EARL, as I understand it,
does indeed allow for value judgments and identification of who made
those calls.)


-- 
Kynn Bartlett <kynn@reef.com>
Technical Developer Liaison
Reef North America
Tel +1 949-567-7006
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BUSINESS IS DYNAMIC. TAKE CONTROL.
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Received on Tuesday, 29 May 2001 14:44:41 UTC