RE: Announcing Michael Cooper as new W3C/WAI staff member

David, I am surprised that you would be so negative.

Michael is a true champion for accessibility and worked tirelessly on the
WCAG working group techniques effort, and obviously has been disappointed in
not being heard at Watchfire.

The fact that people misuse "Bobby approval" is not Michael Cooper's
problem; and I have often heard him speak up about the limitations of
automatic testing of any kind. 

Jim
 
Accessibility Consulting: http://jimthatcher.com/
512-306-0931

-----Original Message-----
From: w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org] On Behalf
Of David Clark
Sent: Saturday, June 24, 2006 12:22 PM
To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
Subject: RE: Announcing Michael Cooper as new W3C/WAI staff member


I for one, find this completelely ironic, and an incdication of how
little the comments of the wider WAI-G really  matter.

Look thru the archives -- all the way back to 1999,  and you will ssee
frustration with the misperception of "Bobby Approval" and how its
false positives were doing a disserce to the adoption of real
accessibility.

Newer, more modern applications entered the arena, with far better
ways of representing the issues. Yeet, as being the first (and only)
tool for approximately 3 years,  Bobby had the name recognition
(arguably more than WAI)  and was looked to as the standard.

Rather than rising to the call,  and evolving Bobby to be the best it
could be, no work has been done on it for 7+ years, yet it continues
to be the go-to for people who only have tangential khowledge of the
issues.

How does this all relate to the announcement of Mr. Cooper you ask?
The decline of Bobby is directly correlated with Mr. Cooper's
involvement. He has been "in   charge" of\ Bobby both at CAST and
Watchfire, and has failed to shepherd the evolvement of the product in
ainy shape oor form.

The WAI deserves, and can find, much botter.

Received on Sunday, 25 June 2006 14:50:45 UTC