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The BBC embraces web standards

Published on: June 23, 2005 by Paul Boag

It was a pleasant surprise yesterday to find the BBC technology site not only promoting Firefox but also Web Standards.

In an article on the BBC site, a web site testing company called SciVisum highlighted the need to ensure browser compatibility using Web Standards.

Research carried out by SciVisum demonstrated that despite Firefox holding 8% of the browser market, 1 in 10 UK websites fail to work properly with it.

Among the major culprits was the Odeon site that has already received strong criticism for poor accessibility.

Although this article failed to reveal anything particularly earth shattering it was still encouraging to see the BBC introducing the issue of Web Standards and compatibility to a mainstream audience.

The article would be ideal for backing up your case when presenting the idea of accessible web sites to your boss. The sad truth is that he is more likely to believe the BBC than he is you!

Read the article now

Comments

Comments are for the discussion of this post. If you have other questions / comments then post them to the forum or send me an email

  • Post by deri jones on June 24, 2005 7:49 PM

    As the originator of the study, I was pleased too at the line the BBC took, full credit to Jane Wakefield the journalist.

    She kept the measure focused on the standards issues, and got across the key benefits of following a standards approach.

    From our perspective here at SciVisum, in the course of our user journey testing of web sites across a range of industries - not only do we often find New Media Managers unaware of the browser issues - they are equally unaware of significant error rates in the key transactions running (add to basket stuff, or whatever).

    If in the study we'd taken our testing of the 100 sites right into their transactions, we'd have uncovered more problems that impact users.

    But back at the browser level, just what will the impact of IE7 be on the planning that portal managers need to be doing....?

    Deri
    SciVisum
    web user journey testing

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