Creating sustainable web-basedresources: more standards

Online Qualitative Data Resources:Best Practice in Metadata Creation and Web Standards

15 November 2005

Nadeem Ahmad – UK Data Archive

ESDS Qualidata

Web standards

• These are set by the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) and WAI (Web Accessibility Initiative)

• (X)HTML• CSS• Accessibility

Standards and accessibility

• Why?– clean, rule–based markup avoids errors

that can make web pages fail– standard-compliant pages and style sheets:

• render nearly identically whatever the browser used

• render faster• work better with search engines• are more accessible to all users

– benefit the web editor as well as the end user

Benefits

• An accessible website helps enables people with disabilities, people using older browsers, new technologies such as mobile devices and different platforms.

• Research tells us that just over 14% of the population of the UK have some form of disability (8.5m/59m. (2m visual impairment) : ONS)

Benefits

• Providing clear, consistent navigation (makes finding information easier).

• Understandable and clear content (encourages people to stay longer)

• Better organised, simpler, cleaner coding and content make pages easier for designers, developers and content authors to work with and maintain

Benefits

• Properly marked up web pages with appropriate metadata separating content from presentation is an example of the “semantic web”

• Search engine friendly – helps search engines attach importance to the correct part of your web site

ESDS & standards

External Web Standards

• XHTML

• CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)

• Accessibility (WCAG)

ESDS & standards

Internal Web Standards

• Version control using Microsoft Visual Source Safe

• SENDA compliancy

• ESDS/UKDA Style Guide

Standards and accessibility

• style guide produced

• updated November 2005

• coherence and consistency

• available for all ESDS and UKDA staff

Standards – Staying Legal?UK Legislation

• DDA (Disability Discrimination Act) 1995/2005

• SENDA (Special Educational Needs and Disability Act) 2001

• Other Acts (e.g. RRAA Race Relations Amendment Act) 1976/2000

All web sites

• The DDA tackles the discrimination which many disabled people face.

• The part of the DDA that states websites must be made accessible came into force on 1 October 1999 (large organisations).

• Since October 1 2004:

• All employers are now legally obliged to make all their services accessible including websites, intranets and extranets accessible.

Educational web sites

• SENDA establishes legal rights for disabled students in pre- and post-16 education.

• This includes courses provided by further and higher education institutions and sixth form colleges.

Other Legislation

• USA – Section 508

• .mobi domain names (from 2006). Developed for mobile content, requires users to adhere to W3C guidelines

• Australia – DDA 1992

Links

• W3C www.w3.org

• RNIB www.rnib.org.uk

• ESDS www.esds.ac.uk

• WaSP www.webstandards.org

“The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect.”

Tim Berners-Lee (Inventor of the World Wide Web)