Chris Taylor wrote:
And, a larger question for us all: what are we as web standards and
accessibility evangelists to do about the continued ingorance and apathy
towards this vital subject, especially in academia? Let's hope that the
recent Target website court case in the US highlights the cause.
I feel it is worth pointing out that not all educational institutions
are still teaching table based design. As an educator I feel I am in a
great position to make a difference at a 'grass roots' level. Students
studying web design at our college (Ultimo TAFE) are exposed to about as
much evangelism as they can take! There is a brief mention of tables for
design, but as a primer for what they may find themselves working with
in industry. Every site that they design should validate to a strict
doctype (they choose between HTML and XHMTL after being presented with
the arguments for and against) and use CSS for all aspects of layout.
They spend an hour and a half per week studying usability and
accessibility, they have access to multiple browsers, operating systems,
and even JAWS (until recently :( ). First lesson they are directed to
join this list!
Past teachers have been such luminaries as Lisa Herrod and Roger Hudson,
and, at the end of semester when they are dizzy from this barrage of
evangalism, they get a good talking to from people such as Russ Weakley,
Lindsay Evans, Peter Ottery, Lisa Herrod and Roger Hudson (not all on
the same bill, unfortunately).
I know of other TAFE's (particularly Blue Mountains) that have a similar
approach toward standards.
Unfortunately it often comes down to the teachers at the educational
institution to promote this viewpoint, as syllabus documents are
normally vague and hopelessly out of date. We are currently working of a
training package that was first developed around 1997 (may have been
1999, but hell, it's old). It mentions tables for layout etc.
I am sure that other institutions would be taking a similar approach to
web design as us If not, hopefully the word will get out and the course
will either drop off or modify its content. We do have mailing lists for
educators in TAFE to try to disseminate the knowledge and facilitate
discussion.
I agree that there can be an apathy in educational institutions - often
as a result of the institutional structure - but it is not necessarily
the case.
Just wanted to point that out ;)
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