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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.

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Petition for UK Government web accessibility

November 22nd, 2006

Ian Fenn has created a petition on the Prime Minister’s website today.

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to ensure that any website launched by the government complies with accessibility standards (WCAG AA at least).

Despite government guidelines to the contrary you would be surprised at just how many government websites don’t come up to scratch. Employing a “Bobby” web developer (formerly known as a “snakeoil salesman”) doesn’t help either. If you’re a British citizen, you can sign the petition.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 22nd, 2006 at 9:41 pm and is filed under Accessibility.

4 Responses to “Petition for UK Government web accessibility”

  1. The Petition’s been Dugg :) Digg it now to get it more attention here

    ScrambledHeadsSays:

    November 25th, 2006 at 8:00 pm

  2. Karl

    Thanks for the link. Myself and “Scrambled” my friendly, sometimes co-collaborator, have both signed up. I can forsee 3 key problems, which we all need to overcome.

    1) Talking about it between ourselves in the web dev community and not taking to the public at large.
    2) Apathy. What difference will it make, no-one listens
    3) The whole e-petition thing not being understood / appreciated / accessible by the public.

    For my last point check out the http://petitions.pm.gov.uk web site and see the generally pathetic response to some very big issues. (I actaully also signed up against ID cards whilst there)

    It seems to me that the general public who are no longer welcome up downing street with a wheelbarrow containing a petition with hundreds of thousands of signatures (unless of course invited first by No. 10 press office / PR machine), are being fobbed off with a little published service, which cuts off a substantial number of possible signatories (i.e. the millions of people without email addresses)

    We should all mail this out to every body in our on-line adderess book. Contact our former / present colleagues / universities and get staff who may me interested to circulate (I did that this morning); everything possible to get it at least to the top of the pile. Sad to say that so far it is going nowhere. That is a great injustice as if this was presented to sufficient people and the case was explained in clear and simple terms, the number of signatories could be overwhelming

    Rob KirtonSays:

    November 27th, 2006 at 9:47 am

  3. I’ve signed it, but the petition itself isn’t enough. There needs to be a visible, quotable, ideally reputable body behind it in my opinion.

    Ian SparhamSays:

    December 17th, 2006 at 12:51 am

  4. Well, they certainly seem to be taking their time over a reply… perhaps they’re having to think.

    LSFSays:

    March 11th, 2007 at 3:19 am