[thelist] On behalf of

[martin.p.burns at uk.pwcglobal.com]

Memo from Martin P Burns of PricewaterhouseCoopers

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Subject:    [thelist] On behalf of 


>>If you've developed your site right to start with, there's no
redevelopment
>cost.

>it's not always as easy as you think.
>As someone who works on a large news site that has
>existed for years, I don't have the luxury starting from
>scratch.

That's why I started my sentence with the word 'if'.

Existing sites have an excuse. Newly developed/redeveloped sites don't.

>I also don't update the site content, and appeals for alt tags often go
unheard.

Depends on how you train your content managers and how your CMS works
(I'm assuming you're using one as you're working on a news site).

Many of the sites I've worked on mandate alt data in the CMS: if you upload
an
image without one, it won't accept the image.

For free content entry, I run training for content managers which *only*
teaches them
accessible HTML, marked up with semantic tags, alts etc. Generally, clients
don't let staff near the CMS until they're trained, and a simplified HTML
session
is part of that training. I only tend to run into problems with those
who've bought
HTML books.
(anecdote - I worked on a large retail site which had dHTML cascading menus
as part of the primary navigation. A very senior member of staff decided to
be helpful
in the run up to launch and come in at the weekend with his HTML book. So
he added
a whole load of content which separated paragraphs with a single <p> tag as
the
book showed... and broke the dHTML for NS4 users. Result - a few days'
launch
delay in the run up to Christmas (absolute peak season)).

>Don't mean to moan, but I have to say I find the w3c website hard to
follow when I'm trying to keep in touch guidelines.

The checklist page is pretty handy:
http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/full-checklist.html

Cheers
Martin


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