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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)