I’m Anthony Hawkins, project manager for the 2008 web standards review. Which seems a good place to kick off the blogging …
The review and the wiki
It’s annual review time. It’s also your annual chance to influence the direction of standards. This year, through the magic of the Government Web Standards wiki, you can be more influential than ever.
The wiki allows registered users to comment on each existing standards, discuss things that are not yet standards, or raise more general standards-related issues. Generally, the standards get more brickbats than bouquets, which is fine by us.
Later in the review process, the Web Standards Working Group will consider all material provided via the wiki in their assessment of the standards. We’re considering wiki feedback a key ingredient in the process.
This year important themes will include the so-called AJAX apps, user-generated content and our response to the W3C’s revised web standards. We note that the web has changed.
The team are also working to develop we’re calling (still with a slight grimace) our Outreach programme, in which we aim to play a greater role in the making standards compliance easier for departments. We’re increasingly seeing the need for departments to talk to each other about problems and solutions in web development. We’d also like to advise more on standards compliance at the start of projects. We’re on-hand to talk with management, Communications, the business and IT about accessibility and usability. (You can email us here.)
I’ll be using this blog to publish details about the review (what we’re looking at and how you can help) and our new initiatives throughout the year.
So why web standards?
Web design is getting harder. As developer Tristan Nitot puts it, designing a site now means addressing “more customers, a broader audience, more diversity in terms of browsers, more accessibility for disabled users, users asking for more speed, while spending less to maintain or redesign a web site”. It’s an increased challenge from many angles.
Web standards were specifically developed to address this. They help ensure near universal access to online information as well as making for faster and cheaper web development by ending the expensive “build, break, rebuild” cycle.
The term “Web Standards” for some people, often those with a communications or design background, still has a constrictive, vaguely Orwellian feel about it. That’s based on misunderstanding, as many top web designers such as Andy Rutledge will attest. Rutledge (who admittedly isn’t sure about the term itself, but we’re talking about the same things) aptly calls his response Web Standards: it’s about quality, not compliance. A List Apart’s Jeffrey Zeldman also makes a strong, entertaining case for web standards.
Governments, including ours, are the largest single producer, collector, consumer, and disseminator of information in the country, most of which, along with services, is being moved onto the Internet. It’s a democratic imperative that none are excluded from this vast online resource.
And getting it wrong can cost. Lost revenue from the UK’s HM Revenue and Customs’ “maze” of a website sees taxpayers underpay by £330 million a year.
Our advice is to get in early. Ensure standards and usability are core parts of your project plan right from the start. Engage a developer who cares. Make sure management know web standards are crucial to a good site (we can help with that). Please get in touch with any and all questions or requests.
