RE: Accessibility: the myth of ugly

> -----Original Message-----
> From: w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org]On
> Behalf Of Joe Clark
> Sent: Monday, July 08, 2002 5:45 PM
> To: WAI-IG
> Subject: Accessibility: the myth of ugly
>
> And open question for the moment: Why *doesn't* Bobby's site
> validate in Bobby?
>

Actually, the Bobby Web site has recently been moved to
http://bobby.cast.org/ and now validates to the Priority 3 level. Before the
move, we had ensured that at least the home page would validate to the
Priority 2 level, though it was admittedly not excellent and other portions
of the site did not meet even this level. CAST had made it a requirement
that the Bobby site be a part of the CAST Web site, and we were subject to a
problem that a lot of sites have: the accessibility people and the site
designers do not have sufficient joint working processes to ensure that the
site architecture supports accessibility. Even in an organization with a
commitment to accessibility, where this should not happen, it does. Once a
site is architected, it is very difficult to address accessibility problems,
short of re-architecting the site, which can take years. I think this is an
emerging issue in the field - now that people pay attention to accessibility
at all, we need to encourage people to pay attention early enough in the
design of large sites to make a meaningful impact, not simply use tools like
Bobby to discover problems after the release when they can't be fixed. CAST
is at work on that for its own Web site; meanwhile we were finally able to
move the Bobby site to a different environment where it can demonstrate more
effectively the principles of Web accessibility in action.

Michael Cooper
Bobby Project Manager
Technical Designer
CAST, Inc.
39 Cross St.
Peabody, MA  01960
Tel +1 978-531-8555 x265
TTY +1 978-538-3110
Fax +1 978-531-0192
Email mcooper@cast.org
http://www.cast.org/
http://bobby.cast.org/

Received on Tuesday, 9 July 2002 15:58:56 UTC