[LINK] Australian Government web sites

[Webb, KerryA]

Tom wrote:
> 
> At 03:17  27/11/01 +1100, Sue Bushell wrote:
> >Does anyone happen to know of any organization which rates 
> Australian 
> >Government web sites on issues of usability, accessibility, 
> information 
> >content etc? ...
>. . .
>
>Unfortunately the level of compliance required for agencies is not stated 
>in the guidelines. In the absence of further detail the lowest level of 
>compliance could be taken as the standard. This would be the Bobby 
>automated test <http://www.cast.org/Bobby/IconGuidelines317.cfm> which 
>implements a subset of W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guideline, 
>Conformance Level "A" 
><http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/WAI-WEBCONTENT-19990505/#Conformance>.
>
>The level of accessibility compliance doesn't appear to be publicly 
>reported. This might be checked by searching for Bobby icons on web pages 
>or by a web crawler implementing a bulk Bobby test (might make a useful 
>student project).

This may be of some use, but the problem with a Bobby check is that it is
mechanical.  It checks for the presence of an ALT tag, but not for the
quality of its content.  Thus an image might have an ALT tag just saying
"image" and get a tick from Bobby, but still fail a proper accessibility
test.

And a Bobby icon on a page doesn't really prove anything.

For material from a recent seminar, see
http://www.sunriseresearch.com.au/OZeWAI_2001/index.html


--
Kerry A Webb
Web Architect, ACT Information Management
(02) 62070239