Re: w3.org site-wide markup review?

Danny,

memories of the lengthy QED thread on WAI from 1998,

Plus ça change...

~:"

On 1 Feb 2011, at 09:49, Danny Ayers wrote:

> For reasons I forget, I'm subscribed to site-comments@w3.org, archived
> at [1]. Aside from a recent flurry about how wonderful the new HTML5
> material is (and requests for stickers - me too!) the majority of
> messages seem to be about questionable markup on the site. I don't
> know what processes are already in place for checking the
> accessibility and usability of pages, but that there are any messages
> of this nature suggests that things aren't quite as joined-up as they
> should be in W3C-land.
>
> Ok, there are things that will slip through any net. The use of CSS
> fixed px font sizes seems to be an example, it doesn't seem to be
> checked by the online validators I tried (applied to the page
> http://www.w3.org/Amaya/ - though contrast issues were flagged). But
> given the W3C's key role in producing the relevant specs and
> guidelines, there's a good case for saying its own pages should be
> subject to far higher standards of quality control than any other on
> the Web. Best practices, leading by example and all that.
>
> A good way for dealing with this would be for the W3C to instigate an
> independent review, and to put automated processes* in place to ensure
> continuing quality of material. Ok, such things would cost non-trivial
> time & money, but even if the point of principle wasn't enough, the
> surprising amount of hostility in some of the messages to
> site-comments extrapolates to much wider, unvoiced, annoyance or at
> least dissatisfaction. i.e. this is a credibility issue, very bad for
> PR.
>
> Whatever, perhaps there's a cheaper solution. I'm guessing there are
> plenty of companies working in the WAI space with products to sell. If
> one were to apply their tooling to the w3.org site, it would be a
> great demonstration for them - and maybe they could be given some
> appropriate stickers :)
>
> Any takers?
>
> Cheers,
> Danny.
>
> * automated process - not rocket science, I bet the necessary kit is
> around nearby, might even already be assembled (but no doubt in need
> of updating). I reckon it would need the following:
>
> 1. (a quick review of the EARL vocab)
> 2. a triplestore (an online one with SPARQL endpoint would be good  
> transparency)
> 3. a dataset listing individuals/groups responsible for the various
> areas of the W3C site (and maintainers of tools like spec-doc
> generators)
> 4. a HTML, CSS, RDF (and any other relevant formats) validator and a
> fine-grained, ultra-sensitive checker (some kind of fussy lint)
> 5. a spider hooked up to 4. pumping EARL data into 3.
> 6. a bugtrack/notification system, sending reports to the people in 3.
> *and* confirming action is taken
>
>
> [1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/site-comments/
>
> -- 
> http://danny.ayers.name
>

Received on Tuesday, 1 February 2011 12:45:00 UTC