Roy Schestowitz wrote:
___/ On Fri 12 May 2006 12:27:05 BST, [ Iain Roberts ] wrote : \___
(Ted Harding) wrote:
Hi Folks,
Inspired by a TYV report this evening on the Govt's new
"Neighbourhood Statistics" website (aka "NeSS"), I just
gave it a try:
http://www.neighbourhood.statistics.gov.uk
[...]
Coincidentally, the very same topic was raised in a couple of newsgroups
last night:
http://message-id.net/<ecv662hel8kppbvuhl1i744tihge3md8fh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
It generated a relatively extensive discussion (browse follow-ups).
[...]
That site could be perceived as pathetic. See the thread above. It's
nowhere
near standards-compliant.
Best wishes,
Roy
My attempt at feedback to the address in the "contact us" follows. They
promise to acknowledge within 2 working days and reply within 10...
"Hi,
I must admit to some disappointment with the implementation of a
creditable idea...
Your site (http://www.neighbourhood.statistics.gov.uk) does not conform
to W3C recommendations for HTML markup, which as a consequence means
that it becomes inaccessible (to a greater or lesser extent) to various
browsers and other programs that expect standards-compliant content.
(you can include various disability accessibility tools amongst these).
This is at the core of your problems with Firefox, Safari and others.
There is little excuse for this on a publicly-funded website designed
for that public to use. The tools to achieve this are trivially
available (see
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=+http%3A%2F%2Fwww.neighbourhood.statistics.gov.uk
for an assessment of your header page), as are relevant guidance notes
(eg: http://www.w3.org/WAI/Resources/#gl). In my ignorance, I would
have imagined that there would be existing policy to that end?
A small annoyance to finish on: the site advises the enabling of
"popups", since it is designed to make full use of those capabilities.
Why is that an annoyance? Most users who have browsed for any length of
time have specifically installed popup-blockers (eg: Google toolbar,
Firefox, Internet Explorer SP2, etc) to prevent this annoying behaviour.
Whilst novel when encountered for the first time, overuse has caused it
to be regarded as antisocial, and a vector for undesirable elements.
Please see
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/web/sp2_popupblocker.mspx and
http://www.us-cert.gov/cas/tips/ST04-016.html for references, and do not
expect ordinary users to differentiate between allowing popups for a
single site/visit and allowing them globally.
Regards, "
Did I leave anything out? :-)
Mike
|
|
