Responsibility and Web Standards

Aster­isk: Web Stan­dards Are Your Respon­si­bil­ity.

Got me think­ing. I haven’t been preach­ing web stan­dards and the usual css stuff for quite some time — I have a ten­dency to end up being ‘rebel with­out a cause’ as it seems I some­times enjoy the shout­ing and per­suad­ing part a bit too much. Feel­ing for some­thing is fine, preach­ing to the choir is not just as fine as the preach­ing doens’t cause any real world-change. Or so I thought.

I can’t believe we’re still hav­ing these dis­cus­sions. But the man is absolutely right. As long as our part of the world is inhab­ited by a lot of peo­ple that — for good or not-so-good rea­sons — are more focused on keep­ing their jobs and earn­ing their money than pro­duc­ing some­thing decent…we all lose.

I’m not here to point fin­gers, espe­cially as I’m sure we all deliver stuff once in a while that doesn’t qual­ify as top-notch-digital-2.0-type stuff. But it is our respon­si­bil­ity — just as it is the respon­si­bil­ity of whoever’s hir­ing the coders — to make sure the projects meet cer­tain stan­dards (in both mean­ings of the word).

Com­pa­nies allow­ing crappy stuff to pass will end up los­ing. Coders spe­cial­iz­ing in crappy stuff will end up being left behind. The fas­cist approach would be to get some way of call­ing the crap. Sites not hav­ing to meet goverment-standards often don’t get tested against the right things. I believe more in the pride-approach:

Hang in there. Keep edu­cat­ing peo­ple and keep show­ing them exam­ples of how Web stan­dards can add real value. It’s a tough job, that’s for sure, but it’s up to you to make sure it gets done

If every­thing else fails, make sure your client/boss under­stands that he just insisted on get­ting less.

Tags: web­de­vel­op­ment, web­stan­dards