Each checkbox group⁰ should have its own name. Your assignment should fetch the value of the checkbox named 'option1'. Your HTML might look like this:

<form action='submission.pl' method='post'>
  <input type='checkbox' name='option1' value='Option 1 checked!' />
  This is the text next to option 1
  <input type='submit' value='Submit' />
</form>
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If the checkbox named 'option1' is checked, then the code you use above will assign the string 'Option 1 checked!' to $value; if it were not checked, $value ends up being undefined.

Adding more checkboxes with the same name will result in different or multiple values. If you use CGI::Simple (which I recommend as a CGI drop-in replacement), the multiple values will returned as an array. So, your Perl code might contain something like:

my @value = $cgi->param('option1');
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And @value will contain a list of all the values for the 'option1' group of checkboxes.^{0 - all of this para.}

0: Updated 09.Jun.2005 @ 14:40 CST. Re-read revealed an oops.