Government websites failing
by Brian Turner
The University of Southampton has released a study that shows that 60% of UK government websites contain serious HTML errors, and fail W3C standards on website design.
A big part of the problem is that the websites are designed specifically for Internet Explorer – which does not adhere to internet standards, and even introduces some of its own.
This means that people not using Internet Explorer can often have problems using the websites. This is an issues that was highlighted by SciVisum last year.
Perhaps more seriously, it also means that persons with disabilities may not be able to use many government websites – which could mean these websites break the law for accessibility for peoeple with disabilities, as set out under the Disabilities Discrimination Act.
The problem of bad website design and coding is so acute that the Disabilities Rights Commission has published PAS 78, a guideline on good practice to designing websites.
An even greater problem for the government websites is looming – Microsoft is expected to release Internet Explorer 7 later this year, and it is expected to adhere more properly to W3C standards.
Already some banks are warning that their internet banking systems will not be accessible with the new browser, as they fail so miserably on standards.
And until the government overhauls its failing websites, once Internet Explorer 7 is released, the sites could fail more than just a minority of users.
For more information on how to help get your website up to date on W3C standards, there are plenty of online communities that can helps, such as:
UPDATE: Microsoft has announced that it’s changing how Internet Explorer 6 works with ActiveX controls on the next major patch.
This will prevent a lot of websites from being able to use existing ActiveX controls in their website design – especially for delivering advertising. Developers have been given 60 days from the date of the patch release to change, or risk running dysfunctional websites.
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[...] Additionally, there have been complaints of poor accessibility with the majority of government websites, with poor W3C validation that make them inaccessible to people with disabilities and those using browsers other than Internet Explorer. [...]