how about creating or at least specifying a methodology for a tool that could measure the "semantic richness" of a document.

[edited by: eelixduppy at 4:34 am (utc) on Dec. 30, 2008]
[edit reason] fixed typo as per user's request [/edit]

is it computer science? then how about something that will not only tell you if you're generally accessible, but also take vendor-specific problems into the scenario, e.g. saving the poor code-slave the time and nerves to test dozens of screen readers etc pp (which nobody does probably, thus driving the whole concept of accessibility into the wall ... the webpage may be fine, the software isn't, if the developers knew exactly what to do to satisfy that software, they might have done it).

oh, and if such a tool / service does already exist, pleas tell me ;)

how about creating or at least specifying a methodology for a tool that could measure the "semantic richness" of a document.

Hi Pharanque , thanks for starting off , with semantic can you please clarify in which context you are saying , are you referring to new semantics web? OWL , RDF etc? OR pointing towards semantics of web pages in general

Please can you write one or two lines more in some more details

Thanks for your time

A tool like this?

Semantic Data Extractor
[w3.org...]

The aim is to show that providing a semantically rich HTML gives much more value to your code: using a semantically rich HTML code allows a better use of CSS, makes your HTML intelligible to a wider range of user agents (especially search engines bots).

janharders : is it computer science? then how about something that will not only tell you if you're generally accessible, but also take vendor-specific problems into the scenario, e.g. saving the poor code-slave the time and nerves to test dozens of screen readers etc pp (which nobody does probably, thus driving the whole concept of accessibility into the wall ... the webpage may be fine, the software isn't, if the developers knew exactly what to do to satisfy that software, they might have done it).

oh, and if such a tool / service does already exist, pleas tell me

Hi Thanks for your reply , Yes it is computer science , you suggestion is pretty good , that seems to be one of the problem why webmasters are not able to take up web accessibility seriously , its really time consuming testing it for many different accessibility softwares , I haven't seen any such unified application as such till now , considering it in context of new WCAG 2.0 recommendations would be good idea

Thanks for your pointer , Wishing you lots of best wishes for new year.

by semantics, i mean most of the discussion in the threads linked from this WebGen post:
[webmasterworld.com...]

A tool like this?
Semantic Data Extractor

i like that tool and use it often but it only tells you what is semantically "there".
it also be interesting to measure the semantic "noise".
even a metric such as percentage of semantically defined textual content could be useful.
something that graphically shows semantically defined content in contrast with other content.
maybe even something that could determine whether headers and tables are used for proper semantic purposes.