On Thursday, January 29, 2004, at 11:06 AM, Bradley Wright wrote:
I have a question for you all, given that quite a few of you work for large,
CMS-type companies and the collective level of experience here is seemingly
very large:
How many of you have experienced working for companies/clients which
actively embrace the standards and protocols/working methods we discuss here
every day? It seems to me that very often dealing with clients and client
needs makes using standards to the fullest an impractical thing at best.
I'd like to know how many of you have experienced work-places where standards are extremely important, and not just an afterthought in the production process.
This is perhaps a little off-topic, but I think it's worth a discussion because the PRACTICAL, real-world use of standards is surely of utmost importance to us all.
Glenn.
I believe embracing web standards is something that starts with the the technical team (web developers, etc), NOT at a management or board of directors level. In short, I don't give my clients much of an option, and in some cases, don't even bother to educate them as to what I'm doing or why -- I feel it's an important step for the web, and by making my websites as forward compatible and accessible as possible, I'm not doing any harm in the process (unless of course they have a large NN4 readership).
To me, starting a project with XHTML for semantic mark-up, CSS2 for presentation, and at least priority 1 of the accessibility guidelines is now (after a very short time) an automatic and effortless process. In fact, the other week I had to build something with tables for layout, and it took me twice as long (muttering things like "this would be so easy with a div and some CSS").
A couple of google searches should help you get a huge list of reading material, particularly this one:
http://www.google.com/search?q=business+case+web+standards
... of which I'll highlight this one: http://www.adaptivepath.com/publications/essays/archives/000266.php
There's heaps on ALA, of which I grabbed just one: http://alistapart.com/articles/tohell/
Then read everything here: http://www.webstandards.org/
And this: http://www.andybudd.com/blog/archives/000143.html
After reading all that, you'll probably ask yourself "why aren't I doing this?", and you'll start implementing changes right away.
I don't believe it takes any extra time of effort (perhaps 5% at *worst*) to develop new projects with standards and accessibility in mind, once you're up to speed... this value can more than likely be recouped in bandwidth costs alone on larger websites, and there's always the threat of a lawsuit :)
Justin French
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