Citrus Skies

Web Standards Awards - Mission Accomplished?

2 August 2006

The Web Standards Awards site is a favourite haunt of mine when I’m in need of some inspiration or even if I just have a few spare minutes and want to check out some of the best sites that the web has to offer. However, on a recent visit, it quickly became apparent that there was something different going on.

Reading through the article entitled “Thanks” revealed that the Web Standards Awards have effectively closed their doors. The site will remain (for the time-being, at least) as a showcase of the sites and designers who were recipients of the award, but no further awards will be presented. The team responsible for the site believe that their initial purpose has been fulfilled.

“It’s no longer a myth that you can produce a stunning site with Web Standards, and the most that our team can hope for is that the Web Standards Awards played at least a tiny part in helping to dispel that fallacy.

...we feel that our mission is complete, that Standards have now ensured their rightful place in the process of Web design.”

How ironic it is then that just below this article Google chose to serve up an advert for a web design group who’s own website falls far short of compliance to the Web Standards.

I can’t argue with the Web Standards Awards team feeling that they’ve accomplished their mission of promoting standards-compliant design, but I believe that there is still some way to go before it becomes rule and not the exception within the web design industry.

Turning a Blind Eye

Take for example, the local Goldeneye Awards which claim to showcase “the best web development and design to come out of Northern Ireland”. From a quick sample of over twenty short-listed and award-winning sites, I found only two [1][2] that passed (X)HTML validation.

So, how do we get to the point were not only is standards-compliance a requirement for award short-listing, but its a basic building-block of web design that designers wouldn’t dream of ignoring?

The Easy Way

Its very simple. Make web browsers choke on non-compliant sites, just the way screen-readers and PDAs do. Everyone would soon know which sites hadn’t been properly validated.

Of course, I’m not serious. Billions in lost revenue, minor content glitches effectively black-listing sites, users simply switching to alternative browsers – it would never work (no matter how tempting an idea it seems sometimes).

The Hard Way

No great surprise here – Education.

Firstly, there’s the path that projects like the Web Standards Awards have been following for some time now – target web designers and highlight that standards-compliance doesn’t have to mean ugly or boring sites. There’s no doubt that this approach has produced some major successes, yet we still see designers and developers churning out websites with bloated code and proprietary tags, so something more is needed.

Earlier in the year, I was talking to a student of Multimedia Design and we were discussing the failings of a particular website. Whilst we both agreed on the major visible problems, when I mentioned the site’s lack of compliance to the Web Standards, the guy had no idea what I was talking about. How much exposure are students given to the Web Standards at university or college? In case this, apparently none. Its not something I have great visibility of, so I won’t tar all design courses with the same brush. I can only hope that those with influence within our educational establishments are doing their best to introduce the concept of standards-compliance at this earliest of stages in a web designer’s career path.

Another area which I believe needs more attention are our clients and the business world in general. Not all clients are technically-minded and ideally they shouldn’t need to know anything about the Web Standards (unless they really want to), as their sites would all be compliant by default. We’re a long way from that being the case, however, and by educating clients and the business world as to the benefits of standards-compliant websites, we hope this will bring pressure on more web designers to reevaluate the work that they produce.

How can we do this? One approach I’ve taken is not just to claim that my work is standards-compliant and display my validation links as badges of honour, but to highlight the benefits of adopting the Web Standards and explain why validation is important. If I can plant that little seed in someone’s mind then, even if they select a different designer or studio for their project, the subject of the Web Standards might get raised during the subsequent project meetings.

I’m sure everyone has different ideas as to the extent of the “problem”, the main causes and the possible solutions, but I think most people would agree that we can’t rest on our laurels just yet.

Article Tags: belfast, designers, education, goldeneye awards, northern ireland, web design, web standards awards, web standards