Just read the latest E-Access Bulletin from Dan Jellinek over at headstar.com and was interested to note (and so might you) of a new “Accessibility Boosting Campaign”.

A group that includes the British Dyslexia Association, launched the Well Adjusted Campaign, which aims to draw up a list of the top 10 reasonable adjustments that will improve the accessibility of web sites.

The campaign will consult with accessibility experts and the private sector to draw up good practice guidelines that are effective, but easy to understand. “We’re aiming at people who want to do it, but find accessibility scary and complicated,” said Sally Hayward of the 2080partners team.

All good stuff, but why am I left disappointed when I look at the quality of the markup at 2080’s website? — the xml prolog is presented to IE for starters, the lack of hover, focus and active states on hyperlinks for people using a keyboard to navigate by and finally the dangerous use of access keys. 2080’s site doesn’t work in Internet Explorer 7 and the OTT text widget doesn’t work on some of the options presented. I hope this is not another case of snake-oil salesmen.

If they haven’t started already, I hope that they are consulting with GAWDS and the fine people over at the Accessify forums.

Update: It would appear to be “another” Textic promotion. I won’t even give them link-love.

We really need to get the genuine experts and advocates (GAWDS and Web Standards Project) talking to these people and co-ordinating a not-for-profit campaign and website. If a company then comes along wanting to do the same thing they are encouraged by the approached national body to sign up to the existing national campaign.

We don’t need multiple campaigns, just a bloody great big one that is very well marketed with the likes of SOCITM, BSI, CBI etc (apologies for the very British view here).

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. Shockingly bad redesign of the UK government’s Department of Trade and Industry website. Dan Champion, a fellow government web developer type reports on the gory details.

After hearing that 37 Signals have released a new jobs portal, I noted a London design agency had a vacancy so I followed the link out of idle curiosity. Further random link-clicking found me at the portfolio page and onwards again to the website for Dr. Ian Gibson MP.

Bearing in mind that Checkpoint 3.7 of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines states:

Mark up quotations. Do not use quotation markup for formatting effects such as indentation.

Marvel at this code snippet:

<blockquote><blockquote>&nbsp;</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<div id="center">
  <blockquote>
    <blockquote>
      <blockquote>
        <blockquote>
          <blockquote>
            <blockquote>
              <blockquote>
                <blockquote>
                  <blockquote>
                    <blockquote>
                      <p>&nbsp;</p>
                    </blockquote>
                  </blockquote>
                </blockquote>
              </blockquote>
            </blockquote>
          </blockquote>
        </blockquote>
      </blockquote>
    </blockquote>
  </blockquote>
  <div class="image_left" id="wrapper">

It’s somewhat ironic that a British MP has commissioned a website that fails to meet web standards and accessibility guidelines with all the documentation and guidance offered to government departments from the Cabinet Office.

To me, this perfectly highlights the need to raise awareness of the recently-released PAS 78 Guide to good practice in commissioning accessible websites. Given a week, Google will display this article alongside the website in question in a search for Dr. Ian Gibson MP so I shall wait and see whether I get any comment on the professional markup.

Update: This markup was corrected within 2 weeks (the next time I visited) so although you’ll find some user-generated tables for layout it’s not all doom and gloom. Apologies for not getting this update out in a timely manner—as teacher used to say: “could do better.”