- From: iris <iristopa@yahoo.com>
- Date: Fri, 7 Mar 2003 13:57:06 -0800 (PST)
- To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
--- Julia Collins <julia@we3.co.uk> wrote: > so we're getting there. But I bet there are views on > how useful bobby > validation is - at the risk of starting a landfall, > I'd love to hear > them.... bobby is a tool for developers to identify problems but because it is so well-known these days outside of the web dev community it often gets mistaken for a definite answer to whether a site is accessible or not. people who don't know anything about the wai guidelines, who don't read further than the 'bobby approved' or 'repair needed' icon, quickly label a site as inaccessible (often in public reports). booby (ah, my favorite mis-spelling, so i left it in ;) takes the wai guidelines very literally. there are a few checkpoints in the guidelines that are often argued about on web design mailing list, there are a few point that force web developers to apply silly and wasteful hacks, a few points that clearly state "until user agents deal with this properly" (or whatever the wording is). well, user agents are getting better... (although we could argue backwards compatibility at this point) example 1: form entry field should contain a default text. that's not always practical and in my own experience with user tests can confuse users. example 2: for purely decorative images it has become general practise to use empty alt attributes. that is just to satisfy bobby and wai. how is that more accessible than a missing alt attribute? example 3: links should be separated by printable characters (this is one of the 'until user agents...' points). so web designer often insert the pipe character and then make it invisible with display:none in the stylesheet. that adds a lot of wasteful code to a page. as i said, one can argue about these things and we have already done that numerous times on this and other lists (i remember a discussion about table summaries not too long ago). all i'm saying is that things are not so black and white. when you check your site with bobby you go through the 'repair needed' points and make your own informed decisions about it. someone without your knowledge might however declare your site inaccessible because it says 'repair needed' for one lousy level 3 point (it doesn't say 'not accessible', does it?). to reiterate: bobby is a fantastic tool for web developers. full stop. iris ===== ******************************* omnia mea mecum porto <http://www.jarmin.com/> <http://www.demos.ac.uk/> ******************************* __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - forms, calculators, tips, more http://taxes.yahoo.com/
Received on Friday, 7 March 2003 19:12:59 UTC