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RE: WAVE 3.0 and Toolbar

for

From: Paul Bohman
Date: Aug 13, 2003 1:30PM


<EMAIL REMOVED> wrote:

[I] would like to have a confirmation of validation such as
"Congratulations! This page meets the requirements for WCAG 1.0 Level A" or
something like that. I know there have been discussions regarding the value
of the WCAG "badges" but if the page meets the requirements setout by the
specific standard, at least the ones that may be checked automatically, then
a statement to that effect would be useful.

My response:

The WAVE philosophy is somewhat different from that of some other
validators. The WAVE will never issue a true "You've passed" message,
because no automated checker can ever claim to be able to judge
accessibility. The most they can do is judge adherence to their algorithms.
Automated algorithms are not fool-proof, and are not comprehensive enough to
be the ultimate judge of accessibility.

However, "you've failed" messages are certainly possible, and verifiable. As
we develop WAVE 3.5 we have discussed the possibility of adding a summary
report, with either a "failed" message or a message along these lines:

WAVE could not detect any specific accessibility errors.
IF
further manual testing reveals that:
- the page content linearizes in a logical order
- all functionality is keyboard-accessible
- all textual equivalents for non-text elements are accurate and succinct
- the page content is organized in a logical way, using structural markup
- site navigation is consistent across pages on the site
THEN
THE PAGE PROBABLY MEETS THE WCAG 1.0 LEVEL 2 STANDARD OF ACCESSIBILITY (or
whatever standard the user chose).

Something like that.

I just wrote the above list out as I was writing the email, so it's not a
definitive list of things that a designer must manually check for, but
hopefully you at least get the idea. The important part of what I wrote is
that the most WAVE will do is say that a page "probably" meets [whatever
standard the user is checking against]. In all honesty, that's all any
accessibility validator can do.

Paul Bohman
Technology Coordinator
WebAIM (Web Accessibility in Mind)
www.webaim.org
Center for Persons with Disabilities
www.cpd.usu.edu
Utah State University
www.usu.edu



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