Re: bobby compliant

At 09:41 AM 2/4/2001 , Robert Neff wrote:
>I am simply amazed at how many sites post the bobby approved icon on their
>site.  The sites I am seeing are not compliant and never were as they are
>missing the basic level 1 subjective requirements.  Even if they were
>compliant, they are not using a positive quality assurance program!

While I love the people at CAST and I think Bobby is a useful tool,
I am often worried that misuse of Bobby might do more harm than
good.

As an example, my wife recently read over a review of certain
governmental web sites (not federal), that reviewed them for various
quality metrics.  According to Liz, the metric used for accessibility
was "do they have a TTD phone number listed, OR do they display the
Bobby icon?"  If one or the other was there, the site was rated as
"accessible."

The problem we face is that "Bobby Compliant" may become more
important than "accessible."  (Note that I think there is also a
danger with "WCAG Compliant" in the same way, but at the moment that
risk is smaller than the Bobby problem.)

In other words, people get confused and they think that what they are
trying to do is get a Bobby logo for their front page, when really
what they -should- do is try to make their web pages more accessible.

I, personally, never use the Bobby logo on sites I design; both 
because I think it's too easily mistaken for a real accessibility
claim, as described above, and because I find that it is aesthetically
unappealing on most web sites.  (Sorry, CAST folks, but a little
cartoon policeman rarely fits in with the visual style I'm shooting
for.)  Idyll Mountain Internet sites (designed primarily by my
wife) typically use either a WCAG logo or a simple text link,
such as that on the Virtual Dog Show site.

--Kynn

Kynn Bartlett
Sr. Engineering Product Leader
Team Edapta
Reef North America
Tel +1 909-674-5225
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BUSINESS IS DYNAMIC. TAKE CONTROL.
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http://www.reef.com

Received on Sunday, 4 February 2001 13:22:16 UTC