Blackmoor Vituperative

Jim Rapoza at eWeek takes FEMA to task for creating a non-standard web site that is not accessible in standard browsers.

…a surprising number of people respond to my missives against non-compliance with a “Who cares?” attitude. If Web developers want to build sites that only work with Internet Explorer, so what? If people don’t want to use Internet Explorer or are using a non-Windows operating system, they don’t have to do business with that Web site. I mean, come on, it’s not like it’s some kind of life-or-death emergency.

But what if it is a life-or-death emergency?

(from eWeek, FEMA’s IE-Only Form: Just What Katrina Victims Don’t Need)

It turns out the the FEMA aid application form is not accessible to standards-compliant web browsers. In fact, it appears to only be accessible to Internet Explorer (which no one should be using, including FEMA). Not only is this embarassingly bad web design (which is bad enough), it’s also a violation of Section 508, the accessibility law that applies to Federal agencies.

This isn’t 1999. Section 508 isn’t new. Web standards aren’t new. It does not matter whether this was done by federal employees or by contractors: the contract should have stated (and probably did state) that the site would have to adhere to both Section 508 design guidelines and to applicable web standards. Just about every government web contract in the last six years has had those requirements.

This is nothing less than another blatant, avoidable, ridiculous screw-up at FEMA.

One of my recent projects will be using JavaScript, DOM, XMLHttpRequest, and a few other techniques in order to provide close-to-real-time feedback to the user. While doing some research on the subject, I ran across a re-reaction to the negative reaction that some folks have had to the name by which this technique has recently come to be known: “Ajax“.

On the one hand, I can certainly sympathize with people who are vexed by the creation of a new buzzword to describe something that has been known by other names for years (“carjacking”, for example, has always irked me, and “splatbook” still causes me to twitch involuntarily every time I hear the word). On the other hand, I had never bothered working with XMLHttpRequest in my projects, mainly because I didn’t know much about it and didn’t realize how nifty it was. It was only when someone at work mentioned using “Ajax” for a project that I started to look into it. So, was a new term needed? No. But has the creation of a new term aided awareness and proliferation of the technique? In my experience, it has, and I can’t argue with that.

Sometimes I get called a pessimist. Yes, it’s true. But once in a while, I am given reason to hope. For example, this article in eWeek, Good Web Design Pays Dividends. It’s nice to see a relatively mainstream IT publication espouse simplicity, usability, and standards compliance as goals of good web design. It’s also refreshing to hear someone other than myself say that a commercial web site should support an actual business purpose, rather than serve as a ridiculous flashing do-nothing whirligig for some graphic artist’s resume (most web sites for movies, and nearly all Flash-based web sites, fall into this category). Combined with the unexpected but much-welcome popularity of Mozilla Firefox, I am positively ablaze with hope for the future.

So, for this moment, I am optimistic.

Speaking of Firefox, check out How Firefox Works. Isn’t learning fun?

I think compliance with standards is important. It is quite possibly one of the most important issues in web design and development today. Some web developers agree with me; some do not. Most do not know enough to even have a worthwhile opinion. One of those who has a worthwhile opinion, but who does not agree with me (despite his being a talented and intelligent designer) is Mike Davidson. I ran across an interesting entry on his blog concerning this subject. I disagree with much of what he says, but you may find the blog entry and the resulting comments interesting. Let me know what you think.

Much of my own work, both on Black Gate and at RPG Library, is not even close to being standards compliant, by the way. It’s horrible, and I know it, and I intend to fix it. When I have time.