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Re: Yes!!! It's the Accessibility World Cup!

for

From: John Hicks
Date: Jun 12, 2006 6:50AM

Daniel Champion wrote:
> Jukka "Yucca" Korpela:
>
>
>>> I agree, that's why I specifically said it would be a reasonable
>>>
> *proxy*
>
>>> for accessibility.
>>>
>
>
>> That sounds like a confusing attempt to use the technical term "proxy"
>> metaphorically. Human communication usually fails, and metaphors make
>> failures more or less inevitable.
>>
>
> You're correct and I apologise, my communication was lacking. What I meant
> was "proxy indicator", and I was wrong to assume that others would
> appreciate that. It wasn't intended as a metaphor.
>
The word proxy has a very technical connotation now, which is very
common, is that what you mean?
but it meant "standing in for something (or someone) else" for about 500
years before networked computers existed...
and you could vote by it probably a 100 years before that...
> Notwithstanding your opinion on there being a relationship between
> validity and accessibility, I still believe it to exist and believe it is
> getting stronger. Unfortunately I can't prove it any more than you can
> disprove it.
>
I will add a column indicating the number of HTML errors (and the mean
per page). It will be interesting. People can then look at a sort by
that number or by the accessibility score (the details of which --ie
which checkpoints -- will be put up soon). Hopefully the "Validity Cup"
(as someone here mentioned) will be there this week.


>
>>> The point I trying to make is that automated testing of accessibility
>>>
> is
>
>>> extremely limited without manual checking,
>>>
>
>
>> I couldn't agree more, except possibly if you changed "extremely
>>
> limited"
>
>> to "useless" or "worse than useless", but that would perhaps be too
>> extremistics.
>>
>
> Automated accessibility testing does have value, so "useless" or "worse
> than useless" would be incorrect. I've certainly derived value from it,
> but where it is valueless is as a comparitor between web sites.
>
Is it really that bad? Are there any quantitative studies on the
relationship between automated scoring and actual accessibility that
anyone knows of?

Italy up, Austria down over the weekend....

best wishes,

John

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