- From: Barry McMullin <mcmullin@eeng.dcu.ie>
- Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2004 19:50:39 +0100 (IST)
- To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
- Cc: mcmullin@eeng.dcu.ie
[Apologies for possible duplicate post - I used the wrong "from" account last time around; also, I see that Joe Clark has already noted the appearance of this article - thx, Joe!] Hi Folks - This has just appeared in First Monday: "A Comparative Assessment of Web Accessibility and Technical Standards Conformance in Four EU States" by Carmen Marincu and Barry McMullin <http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue9_7/marincu/index.html> In brief, it reports results from a purely automated survey of HTML validity and certain accessibility indicators in samples of sites from Ireland, UK, France and Germany. Before anyone jumps on me, we are well aware of the significant limitations of this kind of automated surveying, and these are discussed explicitly in the paper! But, that said, we would, of course, welcome any critical response or commentary. I am conscious that the version at the URL above, while "reasonably" accessible, is certainly not fully compliant even with WCAG-A (not even against those things that can be tested fully automatically). The deep irony of this is not lost on us. Unfortunately, this is a consequence of certain aspects of First Monday's house style and policy which are not under our direct control... Accordingly, an essentially equivalent version of the paper is available in "preprint" form at this URL: <http://eaccess.rince.ie/white-papers/2004/warp-2004-00/> This one is under our control, and we have tried fairly hard to make it conformant to WCAG-AA; and, indeed, we include an explicit claim to that effect. There would obviously be room for debate on some checkpoints - for example, WCAG 14.1 ("Use the clearest and simplest language appropriate for a site's content"). In any case, it is a long and technically complex document, and we may certainly have overlooked something. So, if there are still accessibility queries or shortcomings, do please let us know. Best regards, - Barry.
Received on Tuesday, 20 July 2004 14:53:32 UTC