Bobby Compliance - is there a brief guide?

Hi;

I am thinking of working on a site for a local nonprofit group.

Since I will have the option of starting from the beginning I thought I
would look into making the site Bobby compliant.

I looked at some sites on the web and I got the impression that I would
have to do a huge amount of reading to even learn what Bobby compliance
entails.

Does anyone know of a short and/or cryptic list of "do this" & "don't
do that"s that would get a site to ( or reasonably close ) to Bobby
compliance?

john_williams_800@hotmail.com wrote:[color=blue]
> Hi;
>
> I am thinking of working on a site for a local nonprofit group.
>
> Since I will have the option of starting from the beginning I thought I
> would look into making the site Bobby compliant.
>
> I looked at some sites on the web and I got the impression that I would
> have to do a huge amount of reading to even learn what Bobby compliance
> entails.[/color]

There's no such thing as "Bobby compliance". Bobby is a tool that
assists in determining compliance with the Web Content Accessibility
Guidelines of the World Wide Web Consortium,

http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/

or alternatively, the Section 508 regulations applicable to government
systems in the US,

http://www.section508.gov/index.cfm?...=Content&ID=12

"john_williams_800@hotmail.com" <john_williams_800@hotmail.com>
wrote:
[color=blue]
> Since I will have the option of starting from the beginning I
> thought I would look into making the site Bobby compliant.[/color]

Why?
[color=blue]
> Does anyone know of a short and/or cryptic list of "do this" &
> "don't do that"s that would get a site to ( or reasonably close )
> to Bobby compliance?[/color]

There isn't.

But the brief guide to Bobby is: ignore it.

Bobby is overrated, confusing, and misleading. Accessibility isn't
about satisfying this or that set of tests.

It's much better to start from e.g. the http://www.webaim.org/ site,
which is practically oriented and serious about the needs of _people_,
not that much about artificial "compliance tests".

P.S. This isn't really about HTML, since accessibility is about Web
pages in general, not just the HTML side. I'd suggest posting further
questions on accessibility to c.i.w.a.misc.

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Pages about Web authoring: http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www.html

"john_williams_800@hotmail.com" wrote:[color=blue]
>
> Hi;
>
> I am thinking of working on a site for a local nonprofit group.
>
> Since I will have the option of starting from the beginning I thought I
> would look into making the site Bobby compliant.
>
> I looked at some sites on the web and I got the impression that I would
> have to do a huge amount of reading to even learn what Bobby compliance
> entails.
>
> Does anyone know of a short and/or cryptic list of "do this" & "don't
> do that"s that would get a site to ( or reasonably close ) to Bobby
> compliance?[/color]

Start by making your pages compliant with the W3C specifications
for HTML and CSS. Accessibility for the handicapped largely
assumes such compliance but then goes further by providing content
and style guidelines.

Go to <URL:http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/> for the WAI guidelines.
Scroll down to section 6 and read the guidelines in the boxes.
There are only 14 succint statements. The rest is explanatory
commentary in case you don't understand the boxes.

Bobby itself is obsolete. Test your pages with Watchfire's WebXACT
at <URL:http://webxact.watchfire.com/ScanForm.aspx>. Bobby was a
Watchfire capability that is no longer maintained even if the Bobby
logo is still used.

--

David E. Ross
<URL:http://www.rossde.com/>

I use Mozilla as my Web browser because I want a browser that
complies with Web standards. See <URL:http://www.mozilla.org/>.

David Ross wrote:
[color=blue]
> "john_williams_800@hotmail.com" wrote:[color=green]
>>
>> Since I will have the option of starting from the beginning I thought I
>> would look into making the site Bobby compliant.[/color]
>
> Go to <URL:http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/> for the WAI guidelines.[/color]

Keep in mind, however, that not all of the WCAG 1.0 guidelines are good
ideas in practice. Reading the guidelines is a good place to start
because it makes you consider things you might not have thought about
before.

However, be particularly mindful of any guideline that includes the
phrase "Until browsers do <such-and-such>...". These days, most browsers
and assistive devices probably do such-and-such, and do it in a way
that's better than the recommended WCAG technique.

Remember that WCAG 1.0 is more than 5 years old. A lot has happened
since then. Some things that might have been good ideas at the time have
turned out to be not such good ideas after all. Tabindex (my pet peeve)
is one of those.
[color=blue]
> Bobby itself is obsolete. Test your pages with Watchfire's WebXACT[/color]

I doubt WebXACT is really any better than Bobby was. The only thing
automatic tools might be good for is pointing out glaring potential
accessiblity issues. I would never trust them to tell me that a page was
actually accessible. Those tools are not capable of making that kind of
judgement call.

A better idea is to take Jukka's advice, visit webaim.org, and do some
reading.

--
Reply email address is a bottomless spam bucket.
Please reply to the group so everyone can share.

kchayka <usenet@c-net.us> wrote in news:3jg7o8Fpq305U1@individual.net:
[color=blue]
> David Ross wrote:
>[color=green]
>> Bobby itself is obsolete. Test your pages with Watchfire's WebXACT[/color]
>
> I doubt WebXACT is really any better than Bobby was. The only thing
> automatic tools might be good for is pointing out glaring potential
> accessiblity issues. I would never trust them to tell me that a page
> was actually accessible. Those tools are not capable of making that
> kind of judgement call.[/color]

I couldn't test any pages there. What's it want, cookies? All I got
was session expired notices. You're probably right about its
usefulness too. I was never happy with the advice from any testing
that I've tried to do on accessibility. "Thank you very much, I
already know that I should use alt attributes." My pet peeve.
[color=blue]
>
> A better idea is to take Jukka's advice, visit webaim.org, and do
> some reading.
>[/color]

Nice. I've already done a bit of reading there. I plan to do much
more, especially while we are considering a total revamping of our
website. I'll be taking some of that info into the meeting Wednesday
that will kick off ideas for a new site design.

--
Stan McCann "Uncle Pirate" http://stanmccann.us/pirate.html
Webmaster/Computer Center Manager, NMSU at Alamogordo
http://alamo.nmsu.edu/ There are 10 kinds of people.
Those that understand binary and those that don't.

Gazing into my crystal ball I observed "john_williams_800@hotmail.com"
<john_williams_800@hotmail.com> writing in news:1121087942.686329.246900
@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com:
[color=blue]
> Hi;
>
> I am thinking of working on a site for a local nonprofit group.
>
> Since I will have the option of starting from the beginning I thought I
> would look into making the site Bobby compliant.
>
> I looked at some sites on the web and I got the impression that I would
> have to do a huge amount of reading to even learn what Bobby compliance
> entails.
>
> Does anyone know of a short and/or cryptic list of "do this" & "don't
> do that"s that would get a site to ( or reasonably close ) to Bobby
> compliance?
>[/color]

As others have said, Bobby doesn't exist anymore, and automated
accessibility testing is not the beat all to end all. With that said, I
prefer Cynthia Says <http://www.contentquality.com/Default.asp> and
aDesigner available from <http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/adesigner>,
which will also test for low vision and different types of color blindness.

--
Adrienne Boswell
http://www.cavalcade-of-coding.info
Please respond to the group so others can share

On 11 Jul 2005 06:19:02 -0700, "john_williams_800@hotmail.com"
<john_williams_800@hotmail.com> wrote:
[color=blue]
>Does anyone know of a short and/or cryptic list of "do this" & "don't
>do that"s[/color]

http://joeclark.org/book/sashay/serialization/