TIP 28

What is BOBBY?

Bobby is a comprehensive web accessibility software tool designed to help expose and repair obvious barriers to accessibility and encourage compliance with existing accessibility guidelines.

Bobby tests for compliance with government standards, including the U.S. Government's Section 508. It offers prioritized suggestions based on the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines provided by the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) Web Access Initiative. Bobby allows developers to test web pages and generate summary reports highlighting critical accessibility issues before posting content to live servers.

Bobby tests web pages using the guidelines established by the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) Web Access Initiative (WAI), as well as Section 508 guidelines from the Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board (Access Board) of the U.S. Federal Government.

Watchfire recently purchased the Bobby Website Accessibility Tool and have their own fantastic website accessibility tool you can access via Accessibility101.

It must always be remembered that the W3C WAI is not a standard but a set of guidelines. There is no automatic way in which an organisation can get its website validated against all the guidelines.

A page can be compared against the guidelines to raise a Web manager's awareness of certain issues. The leading tool is The Center for Applied Special Technology's (CAST) Bobby software.

Individual pages can be run through the Bobby service by visiting the site and typing the page URL into a specific box. The service will scan the page and then return an automated report highlighting areas of concern and suggesting what could be done to rectify them.

It must be noted that this application has a number of limitations:

• It will highlight areas that need to be looked at, but will not correct them
• It also suggests using attributes that are not supported by any web browser at
  present.
• It does not validate a web page. This should be done using the W3C
  validator.
• A Bobby approved certification does not necessarily mean it is usable by all.

UK Government recommendations:

'The reports can look extremely daunting at first because of their length and quantity of detail but it is (BOBBY) a service worth persevering with.'

Guidelines for UK Government websites
Illustrated handbook for Web management teams

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