Re: w3.org site-wide markup review?

On 1 Feb 2011, at 3:49 AM, 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.

Hi Danny,

I appreciate any offer of tools to help us maintain pages that people  
use, and where the tool ends up lowering our costs.

This list is one way people raise awareness about page problems, and I  
read the list and fix the ones that we are maintaining and can be fixed.

  _ Ian


>
> 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
>

--
Ian Jacobs (ij@w3.org)    http://www.w3.org/People/Jacobs/
Tel:                                      +1 718 260 9447

Received on Tuesday, 1 February 2011 14:47:00 UTC