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RE: Yes!!! It's the Accessibility World Cup!

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From: Alastair Campbell
Date: Jun 9, 2006 7:50AM

Tim Wrote:
> Interesting that the leading site (www.direct.gov.uk) has a rather
> acute case of divitis/classitis, while being almost valid HTML 4.01
> Transitional (1 error). It ticks all the right boxes (skip links, CSS
> for layout, almost-valid HTML) while still somehow failing to have
> high quality, well-structured, semantic markup.

Well, I think my position on automated testing is fairly well known (if
not, see the links below): it's not a real measure, must publish
criteria etc.

Having said that, it is nice when a site you worked on comes out first
:)

Tim's right, the front end code was originally created by Java/CMS
programmers with no concept of structural code. In a tight timeline we
brought in late and had to 'insert' as much accessibility as possible,
in co-operation with said programmers. Although not 'elegant', under the
hood, I'm quite pleased with how it turned out, especially given the
amount of work changing the system was (for them, we just had to
persuade them to do it).

It would have been nice to have control over the templates (e.g. we
wouldn't have needed a table for the 4 banners across the top), but it
simply wasn't possible.

Kind regards,

-Alastair

Views on automated testing:
http://www.nomensa.com/resources/articles/accessibility-lifecycle.html
http://accessifyforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=5141&;postdays=0&postorder=asc&
start=30#37933 (point 2)

--
Alastair Campbell | Director of User Experience

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