[LINK] Re: Australian Government Web Accessibility Audit Findings, Canberra, 18 January 2007

[Ivan Trundle]

I'll be really picky here and focus on just a few points:

On 21/01/2007, at 4:13 PM, Tom Worthington wrote:

> At 04:40 PM 1/8/2007, I wrote:
>> Recommended:
>>
>>> Seventh Canberra WSG meeting ... 18 January ...
>
> This was an excellent meeting, as is usual for the Web Standard  
> Group. These are some notes taken during the presentations:
>
>>> First speaker: Alexi Paschalidis, Oxide Interactive Topic 1: Navy  
>>> web site redevelopment ...

<snip>

> A feature of the Navy site redevelopment is semantic consistency.  
> They are using Semantic XHTML with structural consistency; for  
> example a second level heading <h2> always has a first level  
> heading above it <h1>.

Why is this semantic? Numerically ordered, perhaps, but not at all  
semantic in language. I can think of many, many publications that  
have pages with subheadings, minor headings, or otherwise which don't  
have this 'level of consistency'. Indeed, in most instances, paper- 
based articles or papers or journals would reverse this into <h2> - 
<h1> - <h3>, or variations on a theme. I'd like to see one reference  
article that states that the first heading is always going to be  
bigger/more important/whatever than the next heading.

And the poor website managers would have to follow suit,  
contradicting those who believe that numerically-ordered heading tags  
are mandatory. Until they started mucking about with CSS and made  
<h1> smaller than <h2> in display, which of course turns the whole  
smenatic argument upside down. One can't always assume that headings  
are either logically ordered, or semantically ordered by importance.

> <snip>
>
> A little AI on the site's feedback form had allowed 80% of queries  
> to be answered automatically.

I've found sites that claim to use 'a little AI' to 'answer  
questions', and I rarely get an actual answer to my question. Simply  
automating the answers does not therefore mean that visitors are  
either better informed, or that their query is resolved.

>
> Alexi emphasized the need to educate the customers about the  
> benefits of using standards on web sites and the need to be  
> vigilant about the danger of  graphic designers being brought in to  
> design web sites. This and the frustration with senior executives  
> wanting to make quick changes are problems familiar to IT  
> developers. <snip>

Yes, the last thing that we need is for designers to design - far too  
dangerous. Or to have senior executives having any control - worse  
still. Best leave it to the 'IT developers', who will one day become  
developed enough to better understand their true role in information  
architecture, services, marketing and communications.

iT

--
Ivan Trundle
http://itrundle.com ivan at itrundle.com
ph: +61 (0)418 244 259 fx: +61 (0)2 6286 8742
skype: callto://ivanovitchk