Cynthia Says is not keeping up...

[weegillis]

When is Cynthia Says going to catch up to HTML5? It's been well known for over a year now that <meta name="language" content="en">, as vital as it once was, is no longer recognized in HTML5, as 'language' is not a registered value for the attribute 'name' of a meta tag.

Just to get it to pass my page, I had to reinsert the tag, as well as the now often debated, keyword meta tag. With the two values missing, my page failed automated testing (these were just warnings, but FAILURE warnings, no less). All three priorities were shown as Passed, yet the page failed because of these two warnings.

We work hard to keep up with standards and produce accessible pages. Why doesn't Cynthia Says work just as hard to keep up. Don't they have plenty of people and resources? Or are they simply giving up the ghost?

[SteveGerencser]

I'll for first. Never heard of Cynthia Says.

[weegillis]

Sorry, should have added a link. Cynthia Says portal (HiSoftware). It's been around for years.

[WAHM]

I've been using the WebAIM tool and also submitting to their email list for critique on critical sites.

[weegillis]

What has this to do with Cynthia Says? This thread is not about WebAIM, although I'm completely familiar with WAVE. Is it caught up to HTML5?

[HTMLBasicTutor]

With due respect to your situation,

Have you tried/installed the Web Accessibility Toolbar (available for IE and Opera). Cynthia Says has been dropped from the toolbar (probably for the reason that it was developed for HTML 4.01).

Steve Faulkner (contact for the WAT toolbar at The Paciello Group) is on the W3C HTML Group every day fighting for accessibility functions and issues within HTML5. He even is maintaining this site http://www.html5accessibility.com/ in regards to support by the various browsers for HTML5 accessibility. As of this writing they all are pretty bad considering they all have representation within the W3C HTML Group discussions. But software takes time to develop. It isn't quite as simple as a website (relatively speaking). Plus HTML5 is still in flux so as soon as they fix something, it could be overturned. 239 messages for September so far and we are just past the halfway mark for the month.

Why not write to HiSoftware and ask them if they are working on upgrading Cynthia Says?

Seems they have chosen to bundle what ever they are working on into their Compliance Sheriff product.