The original Bobby was a free online tool, written by Josh Krieger and provided by the Centre for Applied Special Technology (CAST) used to validate websites for WAI and Section 508 compliance. Launched in 1995, it became well known for the usage of the Bobby Approved icon that website authors could use to indicate they have successfully passed the Bobby online test.
The CAST tool was officially closed on May 1, 2005. However, the Bobby name lives on in Watchfire Corporation's Watchfire Bobby program. Watchfire provided the same free service that CAST did with Bobby in their Watchfire WebXACT tool. Watchfire's current offering, now part of an IBM suite described below, tests pages of web content for quality, accessibility and privacy issues.
The free tool was officially closed by the owners, IBM, on February 1, 2008. The software is now available as part of IBM's Rational Policy Tester Accessibility Edition.
Currently, the Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool (WAVE) provides this free service at wave.webaim.org.