ADA and Bobby
Jeff Thies
I've looked at Bobby, this doesn't seem to require too much.
What does the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act ?) require beyond
Bobby? Where's a better starting point for making a site totally
accesible?
Jeff
Jukka K. Korpela
> I have a site that should be accessible by those with disabilities.
Is it "should" or "shall"? If "shall", what are the objective criteria
imposed?
My advice is to design for universal accessibility by following simple
authoring principles and gaining understanding of the accessibility
impact of various decisions. It takes time, especially since there's so
much purely abstract and confusing stuff as written about
accessibility.
If you need to comply with some "shall" requirements, I would still
recommend working for real accessibility, so that _you know_ your site
is accessible - then evaluate it according to the criteria that have
been imposed, and make adjustments (often _reducing_ accessibility, so
you need to be careful not to destroy too much accessibility when
conforming to "accessibility requirements"). Sometimes you'll even
notice real accessibility problems that had escaped your attention.
For a starter I would suggest
http://www.w3.org/WAI/EO/Drafts/PWD-Use-Web/
which describes the _problems_, in too much detail I'm afraid, but it's
very useful to understand what the problems are. Most people
concentrate on techniques advertized as promoting accessibility,
without understanding why, so they have little chances of evaluating
whether they make any good to anyone, or actually _applying_ the
techniques. This is why they buy (or "buy") software and services
advertized as accessibility evaluation tools - and fail to realize how
limited and even misleading such tools often are.
There are various tutorials at
http://www.webaim.org/howto/
and for a general overview see
http://www.diffuse.org/accessibility.html
> I've looked at Bobby, this doesn't seem to require too much.
It doesn't require much _useful_, but it imposes its own odd
requirements. To put it nicely, Bobby is overrated, confusing, and
misleading, but if you know accessibility well, you could use Bobby for
some simple tasks. More on this:
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www/acctools.html
> What does the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act ?) require beyond
> Bobby?
I'm not really well-informed in ADA matters, since I don't live under
US jurisdiction, but as far as I know, ADA legislation is rather
general in nature, and even its applicability to Web sites has been
questioned.
> Where's a better starting point for making a site totally
> accesible?
Understanding what accessibility is about. To begin with, it's not
_only_ accessibility to the blind.
--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Pages about Web authoring: http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www.html
Isofarro
> I have a site that should be accessible by those with disabilities.
>
> I've looked at Bobby, this doesn't seem to require too much.
Remember that passing a Bobby test doesn't mean your site is accessible.
Automated scripting tools can only check those guidelines that can be
automated. Quite a few of the guidelines of WCAG cannot be checked by
Bobby.
--
Iso.
FAQs: http://html-faq.com http://alt-html.org http://allmyfaqs.com/
Recommended Hosting: http://www.affordablehost.com/
Web Standards: http://www.webstandards.org/
Alan J. Flavell
> I've looked at Bobby, this doesn't seem to require too much.
I've seen sites that have been bludgeoned to do no more than pass the
objective tests which Bobby applies, but without any evident
comprehension of the issues. The result was not exactly impressive.
In fact, in their misguided actions to make the objective Bobby
reports go away, they'd all too often succeeded in making the pages
_less_ accessible in subjective terms.
Do a Google search for "for layout only" (with the quotes), and, near
the top of the list, you'll find a site that will, ahem, "set your
teeth on edge", if you grasp my meaning. Be sure to view the site in
a text-mode browser.
> Where's a better starting point for making a site totally
> accesible?
I think you'd do well to aim for "optimally accessible": I'm sure the
WAI would already agree that "totally" isn't feasible - some of the
requirements can be mutually contradictory.
Bobby most certainly isn't a "starting point", and it would be a real
mistake to treat it as one. It can be a useful tool, as can other
objective evaluation tools, to someone who already has some grasp of
what they're doing, but if the message from the tools is
misinterpreted, the results can be even worse than doing nothing.
So I'd say _start_ at the W3C's WAI pages, and follow the links to
various resources which they show.
A lot of the resources that you'd find with just a general google
search are focussed on making the best use of legacy "presentational
HTML" techniques, but it's my perception that we're already over the
top of the hill on that, and we do better, for new projects, to clear
away as much of that junk as we can, using something which is at least
approaching HTML Strict, in conjunction with stylesheets using a
flexible approach to web page design. This "kills two birds with one
stone" in as much as it makes content accessible to a wide range of
browsing situations for any user, as well as avoiding unnecessary
inaccessibility for those with disabilities.
This is an interesting read, and quite approachable IMHO:
http://diveintoaccessibility.org/ (no personal connection with the
site).
Bobby also sets some wrong priorities, e.g it's very keen to suggest
creating an alternative text-only site, when (I think it's fair to
say) the overwhelming majority of informed opinion is that making an
alternative text-only site should only be considered as a very last
resort when all else has failed.
At this point I'd definitely recommend Nick Kew's accessibility valet,
indeed I would consider it superior to Bobby, but with pretty much the
same general caveats as for Bobby: you need to have a general grasp of
what you're doing before you use the tool, or it will be of no genuine
benefit. And I suppose one could say that once you've got into the
routine of applying accessibility techniques, you're going to get
bored with continually clicking on "guideline satisfied" for the many
manual checks that are not amenable to automated checking.
At least Nick's tool (the purchased package, not the online sampler,
see http://valet.webthing.com/access/ ) can produce an audit report,
with your supporting explanations, which can subsequently be shown to
manglement (or to a customer, if you're working to contract) to
support the claim of accessibility.
Again, no personal involvement to declare, but I've had good
discussions with Nick over the years on usenet and email, and consider
myself a satisfied user of this product.
good luck
Nick Kew
at the keyboard of "Alan J. Flavell" <fla...@mail.cern.ch> wrote:
> At this point I'd definitely recommend Nick Kew's accessibility valet,
> indeed I would consider it superior to Bobby, but with pretty much the
> same general caveats as for Bobby:
Thanks for the plug:-)
> At least Nick's tool (the purchased package, not the online sampler,
> see http://valet.webthing.com/access/ ) can produce an audit report,
> with your supporting explanations, which can subsequently be shown to
> manglement (or to a customer, if you're working to contract) to
> support the claim of accessibility.
As from now, the audit reports are also supported in the online version.
But the facility is limited to subscribers (along with the File Upload
interface to AccessValet), so your desktop version is still a good
investment:-) The online valet is getting a wholesale revamp as and
when round tuits permit, and both Page Valet and AccessValet have
acquired new capabilities within the past week.
--
Nick Kew
Site Valet: the mark of Quality on the Web
http://valet.webthing.com/