Are You Bobby Approved? The Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST) is an educational, not-for-profit organization that provides a quick and easy way to determine ease of access for users with disabilities. Their simple Web-based tool, Bobby, analyzes Web pages and provides suggestions on how to improve their accessibility. Some common mistakes Web developers make are not including text equivalents for non-text items, such as images, animations, frames, audio, and video elements not including text links for graphic-based links and image maps not including transcriptions, captions, or descriptions of video-based multimedia elements not identifying changes in the primary language of the page, such as not including HTML code for changing from English to French in a line of text not identifying data cells and header cells in data tables or including alternate layouts without tables If your school or district has a Web site, visit the Bobby Web site and enter your school's home page Web address (URL). (If not your own site, test a site that you or members of your staff often use.) Read the report that Bobby generates. Was your site approved? What steps are suggested to achieve Bobby approval? Often, Web sites can obtain Bobby approval with the addition of a few simple HTML codes. Developers who are aware of the Bobby site can quickly incorporate approved techniques in the creation of new pages. W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative For more help, visit the World Wide Web Consortium's Web Accessibility Initiative for guidelines, checklists, and techniques for developing Web-based information that is widely accessible by most users.