Most Government Sites Contain Errors

Government sites fail web tests

,----[ Quote ]

More than half of government and council websites
contain errors and cause problems for disabled
people, research shows.
`----

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4853000.stm

In the photo; Tony Blair uses IE

Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups (AT) schestowitz (DOT) com> wrote:

Government sites fail web tests

,----[ Quote ]
| More than half of government and council websites
| contain errors and cause problems for disabled
| people, research shows.
`----

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4853000.stm

A pet peeve of mine: As a national publicly funded broadcaster the BBC
shouldn't be allowed to produce the junk web pages *it* puts online.

IIRC the BBC use a short list of "supported browsers" (which really *is*
short) and effectively "supported Operating Systems", they produce
content in reprehensible multimedia formats, they insist on optional
technologies like JS being enabled on the client etc. The BBC's record
with regard to accessibility of its online content is truly abysmal.

--
Spartanicus

On Thu, 30 Mar 2006, Spartanicus wrote:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4853000.stm

A pet peeve of mine: As a national publicly funded broadcaster the BBC
shouldn't be allowed to produce the junk web pages *it* puts online.

The "font-size:13px" from
http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/css/news_r4.css
is evil®.
On the other hand, their UTF-8-encoded pages in Hindi
http://www.bbc.co.uk/hindi/
are really better than the usual "font-faced" pseudo-ASCII crap
from so many Indian-based sites.

--
Evil® is registered trademark of the President of the United States.

Andreas Prilop wrote:

On Thu, 30 Mar 2006, Spartanicus wrote:


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4853000.stm

A pet peeve of mine: As a national publicly funded broadcaster the BBC
shouldn't be allowed to produce the junk web pages *it* puts online.


The "font-size:13px" from
http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/css/news_r4.css
is evil®.
On the other hand, their UTF-8-encoded pages in Hindi
http://www.bbc.co.uk/hindi/
are really better than the usual "font-faced" pseudo-ASCII crap
from so many Indian-based sites.

Posted this comment on their site:

<quote>
Very kind to inform us about the apparantly poor accessibility and
standardization of UK Government websites. But, he who is without
sin.... May I remind you?

Your own site does NOT validate properly, is NOT compatible with all
regular browsers, it DOES require Javascript to be enabled, and has
several style (CSS) flaws, if not undesirable practices. Look in several
groups on usenet and find many more complaints from your intended
audience. Isn't it about time you put your money where your mouths are
at the BBC ? Or are you just following your "sponsor's" good example?

On a side note: I am very pleased with the site's content, why else
would a Dutch dude read the UK news on BBC.co.uk every day?
</quote>

(pardon my poor use of the English language)

Sh.

Schraalhans Keukenmeester <schraalhans.keukenmeester (AT) geenmail (DOT) com> writes:

[ http://news.bbc.co.uk/ ]
Your own site does NOT validate properly, is NOT compatible with all
regular browsers,

Hmm. I regularly read it in a fairly wide range of browsers (Lynx
included)... As websites go it's fairly good for browser compatibility.

it DOES require Javascript to be enabled, and has

For a tiny proportion of the content, and most of that is not the main
content.

several style (CSS) flaws, if not undesirable practices.

The fixed and rather narrow width is annoying, as is the smallish and
fixed font size, and the alt text can be comical. It's still
considerably more usable and accessible than 90% of the web.

There's also the "low graphics" version which is a fairly obvious and
slightly more accessible alternative.

Sure, it still has a *lot* of room for improvement, but compared to a
lot of sites it's fairly good.

--
Chris

__/ [ Spartanicus ] on Thursday 30 March 2006 16:05 \__

Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups (AT) schestowitz (DOT) com> wrote:

Government sites fail web tests

,----[ Quote ]
| More than half of government and council websites
| contain errors and cause problems for disabled
| people, research shows.
`----

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4853000.stm

A pet peeve of mine: As a national publicly funded broadcaster the BBC
shouldn't be allowed to produce the junk web pages *it* puts online.

I agree that there is a fair bit of 'junk' therein. I have worked on the
source code from the BBC in order to produce mockups and it's a tabular mess
at times. It's also *huge* in terms of page (HTML markup) size. I wonder if
they have not improved in the interest preserving uniformity throughout the
site. Their pages all appear to be static (ruling out the possibility of a
URL re-write engine).

IIRC the BBC use a short list of "supported browsers" (which really *is*
short) and effectively "supported Operating Systems", they produce
content in reprehensible multimedia formats, they insist on optional
technologies like JS being enabled on the client etc. The BBC's record
with regard to accessibility of its online content is truly abysmal.

You rarely find exceptions to that, so in the respect, the BBC are OK. They
also provide instructions to Linux users, which I find encouraging.

Best wishes,

Roy

--
Roy S. Schestowitz
http://Schestowitz.com | SuSE Linux ¦ PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
12:45pm up 23 days 2:30, 10 users, load average: 0.86, 0.71, 0.52
http://iuron.com - help build a non-profit search engine

Roy Schestowitz wrote:

Government sites fail web tests

,----[ Quote ]
| More than half of government and council websites
| contain errors and cause problems for disabled
| people, research shows.
`----

Isn't there some law in the UK about accessibility for government sites?

Nice to see them following their own laws, eh?

__/ [ Tony ] on Friday 31 March 2006 19:26 \__

Roy Schestowitz wrote:
Government sites fail web tests

,----[ Quote ]
| More than half of government and council websites
| contain errors and cause problems for disabled
| people, research shows.
`----

Isn't there some law in the UK about accessibility for government sites?

Nice to see them following their own laws, eh?

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/accessuk/

The Accessibility and Home Office sites are valid. I have just checked,
hoping to find some very embarrassing discrepancies.

Best wishes,

Roy