Terrence Wood wrote:
2) High profile awards given to crappy sites are even more annoying, it
stymies the industry, and ultimately everyone looses. And I still
haven't worked out how a company can win the same award for the same
site in consecutive years - cheapens the award.
This one particularly annoys me with government sites. I used to run up
against this when I was managing the NZ Govt Web Guidelines - agencies
would use "But we got a Computerworld award!" as an excuse for PDFs,
crappy JavaScript, even crappier java and *shudder* nested frames and
tables. I tried to talk to media about it but they really don't seem to
get the importance. Until someone gets sued...
3) Organisations who are advocates for groups within society really
should advocate - especiallly in AU for web accessibility where they
have precedence with Maguire v. Olympics.
I use that one as an example for NZ organizations - "It will happen here
- don't let it be you!" ;-)
4) Don't blame AGIMO. Governments are often advised by companies whose
names start with "i" ,"e" or contain the words "new media", and that's
where the real problem is.
<opinion>Actually, Ter, I'd be very happy to blame AGIMO just as much as
E-i-NewMedia Ltd - their lack of leadership in all e-govt areas is
pretty staggering considering the money that's gone into it. The
previous incarnation NOIE was so deficient they changed the name in
order to revitalize it. Hasn't worked, it seems to me.</opinion>
To be fair, complicating the situation is the triple layer of government
- federal, state and local - that makes it very hard to apply consistent
standards across the entire public sector in Aus. Individual states
have established some good documents (WA and Vic especially IMHO) but
NSW and SA are lacking and Queensland seems to be asking "Wot's a
standard when it's at home?" (*dons asbestos underwear*).
The real issue (for standardistas, anyway) is that very few governments
around the world seem to be putting as much resource into enforcing the
rules as they put into creating them. If the only criterion was WAI
level A and it was enforced strictly, we'd all be much better off.
cheers
Mark Harris
******************************************************
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
******************************************************
