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Web standards and accessibility
When you hire an interactive agency you need to know that they are competent and conscientious in their work. An important aspect of development that may not be immediately apparent is adhering to web standards and optimising for accessibility. This is often an indicator of the level of professionalism and attention to detail employed. Ask your potential development agency what systems they have in place to deal with web standards and accessibility.
Web standards
What are web standards?
The term ‘web standards’ refers to a set of recommendations published by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) that define the languages used to code web pages. For example the HTML recommendation contains specifications for the correct syntax and usage of every HTML ‘tag’ and the way each should be displayed on screen.
Web browser makers use these specifications to display web pages in the way the creator intended. Similarly, creators use these specifications to predict the way their pages will be displayed in browsers.
Why are web standards important?
Without web standards every web browser or mobile device manufacturer could define their own rules for HTML. This would make the web developers job a very difficult one! Web pages would look different depending on the software used and may even break in some cases.
The W3C’s standards provide an agreed framework that help reduce production costs, future-proof existing pages and ease maintenance. Adhering to web standards and semantically correct code also aids search engine indexing and will improve your web site ranking.
The reality
Although these standards exist no browser currently adheres completely to the rules. There are rendering bugs and the specifications are not 100% implemented. E.G. a CSS rule that may work in one browser may not be recognised by another so, audiences on the supporting browser will view a superior rendition of any page that applies it.
In addition there are millions of pages in existence that were published prior to these specifications (and since, by ignorant developers). For this reason browsers can switch rendering modes to accommodate current compliant code or code written for older buggy browsers. The web developer can choose the rendering mode with a ‘document type declaration’ on the first line of the HTML document. A good developer will choose a strict ‘doctype’ which forces the browser to use the most recent, compliant rendering engine.
Web browsers are very tolerant when it comes to badly coded content. They’ll have a bash at displaying anything. If a developer produces invalid HTML code he is relying on this error-handling to interpret what he intended. This leaves to chance how the page will be displayed and whether any part of the page will break. Unfortunately each browser’s error-handling will react slightly differently so, just because, for example, the page looks OK in Internet Explorer doesn’t mean it won’t look like a dog’s dinner in Safari.
Best practice for developers
Developers should always use a doctype and validate code using the W3C’s online validating tools:
Where possible pages should contain no errors. In some cases specific errors may be tolerated by a developer who understands the reasons and implications. Developers should test web pages on as many browsers as possible to ensure the best presentation is available to all.
Accessibility
There is a lot of confusion and misinformation regarding web accessibility. In fact, if you try to find out what legislation exists in the UK you may end up more confused than when you began. The reason for this is that there is no specific legislation for web sites in the UK – the UK’s Disability Discrimination Act does not mention the web at all. To confuse the matter there is also a plethora of guidelines in existence. The W3C’s WCAG guidelines form the basis of many others and are good starting point to ensure that a web site has basic accessibility features.
It is a common misconception that developing web sites that are fully accessible to the disabled will cost lots of extra time and money and will have no benefit to anyone but a minority of users. In fact, sites developed to maximise accessibility actually help everyone and can be achieved with little or no extra work if the guidelines are followed from the start. many guidelines are simply common-sense ways to improve usability. for example, a few points from the WCAG guidelines:
- Do not rely on colour alone to communicate meaning
- Provide alternative content for users without required plugins
- Allow users to activate page elements via a variety of input devices.
- Avoid deprecated HTML code
By making an effort to improve accessibility, a better experience can also be ensured for mobile devices such as iPhones and users with older computer equipment.
At Kanzo we understand the importance of web standards. Our work is vigorously tested and always aims for maximum accessibility.
Contact us now to arrange a meeting