A future-proofed web design course - taking standards and accessibility to the masses.

Hugh McCracken [HREF1], Lecturer, The Open Polytechnic of New Zealand [HREF2], Private Bag 31914, Lower Hutt, New Zealand.

Abstract

This paper discusses the aim of a web design course to future-proof the student, looking forward rather than back. 'Look-and-feel' takes a back seat, emphasis instead being placed on standards, accessibility, structural documents and providing students with the means of keeping themselves up to date.

The degree-level course will be offered as one component of a two-component Certificate in Web Design and Writing at The Open Polytechnic of New Zealand [HREF2]. The Certificate will provide a unique offering, equipping the student with knowledge of web technologies, standards, legal obligations and the skills to produce effective, standards-conformant and accessible web content.

Background

The current offering of degree-level courses at The Open Polytechnic of New Zealand [HREF2] does not include a Web Design course. Many second and third year courses, both current and proposed, either assume a prerequisite knowledge of web design, or include a module to cover the subject. A first-year Web Design course would satisfy these requirements, and eliminate the need for inclusion of basic web design principles and techniques in these courses.

Concurrently a 'Diploma in Professional Communication' was approved for development, including a new course 'Writing for the Web'. The proposed Web Design course was coupled with the Web Writing course to produce a new Certificate programme, having a unique and marketable graduate profile, and anticipated graduate 'stair casing' to further studies. Graduates of the programme will be armed with the skills and knowledge they need in order to participate in the global arena, and to locate and uptake new technologies as they appear. This fits well with New Zealand Tertiary Education Strategy 2002-7 which aims to 'shorten the gap between the availability of new technologies and their uptake within society' which will enable New Zealanders to seek 'new opportunities for achieving prosperity by applying our skills and knowledge on the increasingly accessible global stage' (Tertiary Education Commission 2002 [HREF3]). It will also give students the skills and knowledge to manage and design websites that will satisfy New Zealand Government Web Guidelines.

Web technologies and standards

The New Zealand Government, through the E-Government Unit at the State Services Commission, has implemented a Web Guidelines policy for New Zealand public sector organisation web sites, also encouraging use by local authorities and other websites that are accessed by the public (State Services Commission 2002 [HREF4]). It promotes 'excellence in public sector websites' and predicts that sites that comply with the guidelines will be 'accessible by a very wide audience' (State Services Commission 2002, p1 [HREF4]). It also recommends that the skills required to implement the guidelines are identified and appropriately resourced. The web design course should therefore be positioned whereby objectives and learning outcomes have a good degree of fit with the skill set required to implement the Web Guidelines policy.

The W3C is not a government body and is only able to make recommendations, whereas standard issuing bodies such as the New Zealand E-Government Unit may consider adopting a W3C recommendation as a standard (W3C Advisory Board 2001 [HREF5]). The Web Guidelines make a strong recommendation to use HTML version 4.01 along with the use of Cascading Style Sheets, level 1 (CSS1) for presentation requirements. eXtensible Hypertext Markup Language (XHTML) might be considered for web delivery documents where flexible future use is predicted (State Services Commission 2002, point 4.2 [HREF4]).

The guidelines require that public sector web sites must be usable in all browser versions, and states that 'adhering to standards is the best way to achieve this' (State Services Commission 2002, point 4.5.2 [HREF4]). It is also stated that CSS may be used to present content without the use of tables, provided that 'content may be viewed with any browser' and that a 'suitable level of access' is ensured for those with older browsers (State Services Commission 2002, point 4.6.2 [HREF4]). This implies that the use of Cascading Style Sheets, level 2 (CSS2) for positioning is acceptable, provided that a 'suitable level of access' is provided when content is accessed with browsers having little or no support for CSS2 style rules (State Services Commission 2002, point 4.6.2.1 [HREF4]).

A key objective of the Web Guidelines - to 'minimise download times' (State Services Commission 2002, point 1.3 [HREF4]) can be partially satisfied through the use of structural web delivery documents. These documents will be accessible to both recent and older user agents, access technologies, wireless devices and also tend to be of smaller file size (Arch & Letourneau 2002 [HREF6], McCracken 2002 [HREF7]). The web design process requires the designer to analyse information and provide an appropriate structure at the start of the process (Turner 1999 [HREF8]), and the provision of structural web delivery documents is a natural extension of this process.

A central focus of a web design course should be the provision of structural documents that meet current web standards. By directing students to the source of web standards they will then have the means by which to keep abreast of technological developments, and to make informed and future-proofed decisions including the adoption of web standards recommended by the New Zealand Government Web Guidelines (Abramatic et al 2000 [HREF9], State Services Commission 2002 [HREF4]).

Adoption of web standards

A representative sample of New Zealand Government sector websites was examined to determine the extent to which New Zealand Government Web Guidelines have been adopted. The websites of all twelve New Zealand Regional Councils present a snapshot of current practice.

The mark-up of each homepage was checked for validity using the W3C HTML validator (W3C 2002 [HREF10]). HTML 4.01 transitional or HTML 4.01 frameset document types were selected as appropriate (being those recommended by the Web Guidelines), along with iso-8859-1 character encoding. Document types were completely absent in six of the homepages.

None of the homepages contained valid mark-up, the worst result being a total of 375 errors. Furthermore, six of the homepages used the deprecated <font> element rather than CSS style rules that are recommended by the Web Guidelines. Tables were widely used for page layout, frames to a lesser extent, with only one homepage (Otago Regional Council) utilising CSS2 positioning style rules for this purpose.

Assuming that the Regional Council web sites are representative of New Zealand Government organisational web sites as a whole this suggests that current web standards are not widely implemented in the Government sector. And to meet future requirements, many of these backward-thinking web sites will have to be redesigned in order to be forward-compatible with new types and versions of user agents (Zeldman 2001 [HREF11], Zeldman 2002 [HREF12]).

Forward compatibility

The New Zealand Government Web Guidelines state that 'New Zealanders will be able to gain access to government information and services, and participate in our democracy, using the Internet, telephones and other technologies as they emerge.' (State Services Commission (2002) [HREF4]). Zeldman (2001 [HREF11]) introduced the term 'forward-compatibility', whereby documents created today will be compatible with browsers and other user agents of the future. The W3C state that conformance to the latest web standards will increase the likelihood of current web document compatibility with new technologies (Abramatic et al 2000 [HREF9]). The New Zealand Government Web Guidelines embrace this concept and recommend that government organisations future-proof their web content (State Services Commission (2002) [HREF4]).

Typically a delay is experienced between the release of new technologies and the availability of authoring applications and user agents. A further is encountered before new technology is in widespread use (Treloar 1999 [HREF13]). The delay might be used to good effect, to determine appropriate use of new technologies and plan for their adoption. For example, CSS1 became a W3C recommendation in December 1996, browsers released in 1996 and 1997 provided limited support, but near-full support was not provided until the year 2000, some four years on (Meyer, 2001 [HREF14]). Table 1 demonstrates that 50% of Regional Council homepages sampled did not exclusively use CSS1 for presentation, as demonstrated by use of the deprecated <font> element. This is six and one half years after release of the CSS1 recommendation, a situation far removed from that of forward-compatibility. A similar delay has been experienced with the adoption of the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative's (WAI) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), having become a W3C recommendation in May 1999, with the New Zealand Government formally recognising a subset of the recommendation in August 2002 (Chisholm et al 1999 [HREF15], State Services Commission 2002 [HREF4]).

Accessibility guidelines in New Zealand

The New Zealand Government Web Guidelines policy states that 'no member of the public, having Internet access should be unable to access any service or information available on Government websites' (State Services Commission 2002, p5 [HREF4]). The New Zealand Human Rights Act 1993 also prohibits discrimination on the grounds of disability (State Services Commission (2002) [HREF4]), which can be assumed to extend to the provision of information and services on web sites, a situation that exists with comparable legislation in Australia, and the United Kingdom (Alexander, 2002 [HREF16], Sloan, M. 2001 [HREF17], Disability Rights Commission 2002 [HREF18]). By way of example the New Zealand Ministry of Health put in place a web accessibility policy in 2002, with the aim that the main Ministry web site will conform to W3C WAI WCAG conformance level 'Double-A' (all Priority 1 and 2 Checkpoints satisfied) and conformance level 'Single-A' (all Priority 1 Checkpoints satisfied) for other Ministry-supported sites by June 2003 (Chisholm et al 1999 [HREF15], Ministry of Health 2002 [HREF19]). It would follow that staff and contractors involved in producing content for Ministry of Health web sites will require knowledge of the WAI Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and the skills to put the guidelines into practise.

Adoption of web accessibility guidelines

An additional examination of the twelve New Zealand Regional Council websites will examine to what extent web accessibility guidelines recommended by the New Zealand Government Web Guidelines have been adopted. New Zealand Regional Council homepages were checked for conformance to W3C WAI WCAG 1.0 using Bobby Online (Watchfire Corporation 2002 [HREF20]). A subset of all WCAG 1.0 checkpoints are able to be detected automatically with Bobby, a count of errors provided. Manual checks would be required to determine full conformance to all WCAG 1.0 checkpoints.

Table 2 shows a wide range of results for the Regional Council homepages, two instances where automated Priority 1 checkpoints have been satisfied, the remainder of Priority 1 results returned due to the lack of provision of alt text for <img> elements, and image-type buttons in forms. Priority 2 results included use of absolute sizing and positioning, faults in the construction of forms including mouse-only event handlers, duplicate link phrases for different URLs and lack of public text identifier in the DOCTYPE statement. A simple validation check against the HTML 4.01 DTD would also have identified many these errors.

File size is also an important consideration for the provision of accessible web content, the New Zealand Government Web Guidelines recommending a maximum homepage file size of 55KB, including image files (State Services Commission 2002, point 4.6.4 [HREF4]). Table 3 presents statistics for the New Zealand Regional Council websites, with a median of 85KB, 50% higher than the recommended maximum. The degree to which structural web documents are being provided might be gauged by the number of content characters as a proportion of total characters in the homepage HTML file, ranging from a tiny 1.2% through to 21.5%. Graphic files account for a high proportion of file size in excess of the recommended maximum, including images solely comprising of text, which does not conform to the Web Guidelines (State Services Commission 2002, point 4.6.11 [HREF4]).

The Regional Council Website statistics demonstrate a lack of basic accessibility features, much of which could be implemented with relatively minor changes. The provision of structural documents presents a more challenging proposition. Web documents must conform to New Zealand Government Web Guidelines so far as the provision of inclusive service is concerned, ensuring a 'suitable level of service' for those with older browsers, yet anticipate the requirements of new and emerging technologies (State Services Commission 2002 [HREF4]).

Conclusion - standards and accessibility are requisite knowledge

The New Zealand Government Web Guidelines has established the requirement for government organisations to adhere to W3C HTML recommendations and a subset of the WAI Web Content Accessibility Guidelines when publishing information in web documents (State Services Commission 2002 [HREF4]). These guidelines, at least in one New Zealand Government sector are yet to be fully realised.

Imparting structure to web documents in a standards-conformant, future-compatible and accessible manner will be the pervasive and increasingly important themes of a future-proofed web design course.