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

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From: Daniel Champion
Date: Jun 12, 2006 8:20AM

John Hicks wrote:

> The word proxy has a very technical connotation now, which is
> very common, is that what you mean?

No, I meant "proxy indicator", which has a specific meaning in the field
of research and statistics.

>> Daniel Champion wrote:
>> 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?

Well, what the league table is actually showing is how the sites performed
when tested against (presumably) a very small subset of the WCAG
guidelines. I'd assume it's ranking sites based on something like:

1. Presence of alt attributes (but not checkpoint 1.1 which cannot be
adequately tested automatically)
2. Checkpoint 3.2 (validity)
3. Checkpoint 3.4 (relative units)
4. Checkpoint 3.5 (headings)
6. Checkpoint 11.2 (deprecated technologies)
7. Checkpoint 12.4 (associate labels with controls)

Plus perhaps one or two more? Very few of these can be reliably tested
without human judgement.

You're presenting the table as though it's ranking sites on their
accessibility, when in fact it's ranking them on these few elements of
accessibility - something of a misrepresentation. To think of it another
way, you've got two cardboard boxes - box one is 100cm high, box two is
50cm high - which has the greater volume?

Dan




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