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A podcast for those who design, develop and run websites.

Boagworld is the blog of web strategist Paul Boag who lives in the heart of rural Dorset (hence the cows). He produces a weekly podcast with UX consultant Marcus Lillington on building and running websites. They also run the web design agency Headscape.

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Web standards Charter

Posted in Reviews on: Tuesday, October 4, 2005 by Paul Boag

Robert Nyman and Vlad Alexander have published An Open Letter to WaSP, in which they call for a unified way of promoting web standards through a web standards charter.

At first glance this seemed like a great idea, but I have to say after some consideration, I am not so sure. I would like it to work, but then I would like there to be a single that is perfectly compliant! Doesn’t mean I am going to get my wishes.

Just another thing to disagree about!

Surely, a WASP charter is just going to replicate the problems we see in the interpretation of W3C guidelines.

Take for example the issue of . The majority of disagreements come from the interpretation of the WAI guidelines, which were created to bring a standard approach to website accessibility. Surely, a WASP charter is just going to replicate the problems we see in this area.

Unless the charter becomes a massive unreadable legal document it is going to be open to interpretation and so people will be arguing about this in the same way as they argue about W3C guidelines.

Disagreement is inevitable

For better or worse, the web is full of people expressing opinions and they are going to disagree. I do not believe that a "charter" will prevent that.

The reality is that there are many ways of implementing both web standards and accessibility. In fact, it is fair to say there is no single "right way" of doing things. It depends on many factors from target to available budget! If a charter took these different approaches into account it would leave itself open to interpretation.

I really wish a charter could help bring clarity but I am just not sure it will.

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Additional Information

Produced by Headscape

Boagworld is produced by the web design agency Headscape founded by Marcus, Paul and Chris Scott. Headscape also has a number of other talented guys who blog. Check them out.

  • Craig Rowe is one of our amazing developers and writes some superb posts on everything from .net to AIR apps.

  • Ed Merritt is a Headscape designer who's blog contains examples of his work and a number of free Wordpress themes.

  • Dave McDermid is a Headscape developer who has an excellent blog. He blogs on everything from AJAX to security.

  • Rob Borley is one of our project managers and blogs regularly on client and project management issues.

  • Leigh Howells is our multimedia design guru (whatever one of those is). He blogs on a mixture of design and music.

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