That Standards Guy



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That Standards Guy is the online persona of Karl Dawson, a web developer living and working in Ipswich, England.

I'm a member of the Guild of Accessible Web Designers and the Web Standards Group and team member at Accessites—an awards site to recognise accessible and usable websites.

I specialise as a front-end developer and worry about the minutae of semantic (X)HTML and CSS, accessibility, microformats, typographic rhythm and grid design. I also care about the user experience and remind myself constantly of visitor site goals when working with clients and their aims.

That Standards Guy is proudly powered by WordPress using my own “StrictlyTSG v3.0” theme. Site Policies.

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Web Standards and Small Businesses

Andy Higgs was somehow tempted to switch his final year dissertation from essentially “Why don’t grannies like using mobile phones?” to “An enquiry into the acceptance of accessible web content and web design standards by UK small businesses.” With only four weeks to spare.

The dissertation approaches some key accessibility questions in the UK; do small businesses know that they are expected to provide accessibility and are they prepared to bite the bullet and shell out for an upgrade? There are also a few more findings and the statistics could be particularly useful if you are doing any work in the area yourself. If you want a one-page overview of the whole project including some key findings, you can read the abstract.

At 9000 words with an underlying online questionnaire Andy devised to base his findings on, it’s a good piece of work, especially given the timescale. Kudos Andy.

Read his full dissertion here.

 

One Response to “Web Standards and Small Businesses”

  1. Additional comments from around the globe (and a few days later):

    Web Standards Project: Accessibility and UK Businesses.
    Molly: Web Accessibility in UK Small Businesses (right-hand sidebar).
    Stuff and Nonsense: Web Accessibility In UK Small Businesses.

    For the life of me, I can’t remember where I learnt about this research. Was I first?