The building codes analogy is one I often use myself, but as pointed out already, it does fall flat when asked for the governing bodies that are policing the web.
When faced with a client/agency/designer that doesn't (want to/need to) understand the 'technical' aspects (bandwidth, ease of maintenance, accessibility, cross UA compatibility, 'standards' compliance, etc) then a certain amount of licence has to be applied to the explanation and reasoning for adopting standards. If that involves making a comparison to a standard in their field of business then so be it. A client generally simply wants the site to look the way they want and to work. Can this be achieved using tables, tag soup, intrusive scripting, deprecated tags and HTML2.0? Yes. Will that site be viewable in the vast majority of UA's? Yes. So as far as the client is concerned they have a website that fulfils their requirements. The aim, then, is to look outside the 'magic' of web development, and put the benefits into terms that can be quantified in direct financial terms, eg smaller page size=reduced bandwidth=lower hosting costs, css=quicker site wide changes=reduced maintenance costs, AND/OR site availability for a range of users, eg scripting disabled, vision, mobility or mentally impaired, text only or screen readers, etc. Preventing/limiting access to users corresponds to a drop in financial return or effectiveness of the website. Dollars and cents is the language that will convince most, if not all, sceptics. Regards Scott Swabey Lafinboy Productions www.lafinboy.com > Joseph R. B. Taylor wrote: > > The day WILL come when there is a governing body over the net. > There WAS a day when housing codes DID NOT exist and were > being worked on and accepted. > Patrick H. Lauke wrote: > Call me a cynic, but I seriously doubt that any web standards savvy > designer/developer may be able to convince clients to hire > her by saying that in "one day there will be a governing body that > will make all non-standards compliant sites illegal". ****************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help ******************************************************
