The W3C/WAI guidelines checklist show high error numbers. We found 26 failures in Blackboard 4, six of which were Priority 1. Prometheus yielded 30 failures, four of which were Priority 1. WebCT had 31 failures and Blackboard 5 had 33; both programs had five Priority 1 errors. We evaluated the checklist continuously throughout our testing, and failed a program for one error at any point on any page within the package.
Twelve errors were consistent across all four programs. This includes the lack of alternative content for script and applet pages, not using style sheets where they could, not avoiding pop-up windows, and not describing framesets. None of the programs identifies the primary language of the pages, provides keyboard shortcuts, provides non-link characters between links, or allows users to receive documents according to user preferences.
Consistent with A-Prompt, we found a number of errors unique to a few programs.
Blackboard 4 and Prometheus fail to provide text equivalents for non-textual
elements. Both versions of Blackboard fail to provide text links for image map
content. Blackboard 4 fails to provide alternatives to JavaScript elements and
does not title its frames. Most of the packages fail to identify row and column
headers in data tables. Blackboard 4 escapes this error because we did not find
any examples of data tables in the program.
Content authored by AnnMarie Johnson
and Sean Ruppert. ©2001
last updated
November 20, 2001
by AnnMarie Johnson.