Re: w3.org site-wide markup review?

On 1 Feb 2011, at 8:45 AM, Ian Jacobs wrote:

>
> 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.
>

[Follow-up]

Another way to say this is: a site-wide review is not as interesting  
to me as fixing real problems that people encounter.

_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
>
>

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

Received on Tuesday, 1 February 2011 14:54:19 UTC