The Web Standards Project is
a grassroots coalition fighting for standards
that ensure simple, affordable access to web technologies
for all.
What impact can a user group have in a university environment? Rose Pruyne would know, being one of the early members of The Pennsylvania State University's Web Standards Users Group and the chair of their Content Management Best Practices Group. We ask Rose to share her experiences with us.
Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to answer our questions. Many people in the development community come from diverse backgrounds. Rose, could you tell us about your transition to web developer?
I picked up Web development in 1994 and switched careers (from science writer to Web professional) in 1996. The first site I was responsible for building from the ground up was an undergraduate admissions site, back in '96. It was great experience. Admissions sites are so critical at universities. Since then I've built and managed 20 or so sites, large and small, for Higher Education and various organizations.
I started experimenting with CSS in 1998. Browsers back then were SO not ready. The result was some shockingly ugly Web pages.
But it was only a matter of time. The maturation of Web Standards, along with the evolution of designing for accessibility and usability - those are the best things to happen to the Web since Berners-Lee flipped the switch.
We understand that you were involved in the formation of a Penn State group advocating Web Standards. How did the group form, and what is your involvement with the group?
Penn State's Web Standards Users Group was formed by Christian Vinten-Johansen in 2004. It started out as a vehicle for those of us who were interested in the technologies to swap information. It wasn't too long before we were working with Penn State's administration to revise its Web policy to include standards/accessibility compliance. I serve as secretary for the users group, and I provide resources and training.
How often do you meet, and what goes on at a typical meeting?
We meet once a month for two hours at a clip. This allows time for a presentation or two, updates on what's happening university-wide and out in the world, and planning - along with roundtable discussions, feedback on each other's work, that sort of thing.
The presentations mainly consist of demonstrations of what we're doing with CSS/XHTML, how we're redesigning our sites, how we're managing the whole process. Everyone's strongly encouraged to present and post their materials on the site. The idea is to generate resources for the whole institution.
What advice would you give developers at other colleges and universities where noncompliant sites are predominant? Would you encourage them to form groups similar to the Web Standards Users Group at Penn State?
Forming a users group is a fine start. After that, it depends on what you want to accomplish: Are you looking to provide a venue for forward-thinking developers? Or do you want to shape the direction of the whole institution? A users group alone is not likely to accomplish the latter. There are too many organizational factors that get in the way. It's not that late adopters are necessarily uninterested; chances are they already have a to-do list a country mile long. If universities are serious about Web Standards, the transition has to start at the policy level. Because otherwise, the whole idea is just going to get lost in the landscape of multiple priorities.
That said, users groups can be invaluable resources for developing policy and seeing it through. Universities would be very wise to tap into their expertise.
Users groups can be invaluable resources for developing policy and seeing it through.
What was the administration's reaction to the group advocating Web Standards?
Those of us who are Web Standards/Accessibility/Usability evangelists at Penn State - and there are a fair number of us - have been extremely fortunate. Our users group got the attention and support of administration from the start. A number of us have taken part in shaping university policy requiring compliance with Web Standards and Section 508.
Now that the university requires Web Standards and Accessibility compliance, what are the group's current activities?
Some members of our group are part of the university's Web Accessibility Committee, which is working out how best to shepherd the rest of the Web development community into fold. As part of the effort, the users group has taken on responsibility for providing a set of online resources to help developers with making the switch. Our group's founder and chair now coordinates accessibility training at the university and serves on a Big Ten task force that is identifying additional requirements needed to make up for shortcomings of Section 508.
Since Penn State has embraced Web Standards, do you anticipate any problems in the conversion from nonstandard to standards-compliant sites?
Bringing all of Penn State up to speed is going to be interesting. The university has myriad Web sites that represent dozens of colleges and administrative units spread across 20 campuses. Programming support of these sites varies widely. We're talking everything from lone individuals for whom the Web is one of a dozen responsibilities to good-sized teams whose main focus is the Web. And of course, skill sets run the usual gamut: At one end, we have those with total reliance on WYSIWYG editors. At the other end, we have our experienced, gifted programmers leveraging a host of technologies. For those who are low on the curve, it not surprisingly comes down to resources and training.
I predict that content management systems (CMS) are going to play a very important role in this transition. Many units at Penn State have been on the verge of making the switch to some sort of CMS. A standards/accessibility-compliant content management framework is going to look very attractive right about now.
You mentioned earlier that the Penn State Web Standards Users Group is providing online resources. Is the group also involved in training?
Several members of our group are very involved in providing training—we do one-to-one consultations, half-hour sessions focusing on some small aspect of Web Standards, and hands-on tutorials that last half a day or more.
In the past you've given presentations at Penn State's annual Web Developer conference, and last year you gave a presentation at the HighEdWebDev Conference. Do you have any future presentations in the works?
I've got a couple of presentations in the works. I'll be presenting at HighEdWebDev this fall on rolling your own content management system using a combination of home-grown programming and open source tools. I highly recommend the build/open-source approach. I built my own customized CMS several years ago and subsequently worked on a team that built an enterprise-level CMS. The Teaching and Learning with Technology group at Penn State is customizing Plone for the Penn State environment. It's a welcome alternative to dropping $60 thousand or more on an off-the-shelf product that may or may not be customizable or standards/accessibility-compliant.
I'll also be presenting at several events on incremental Web site redesign using the principles of Extreme Programming. It's an idea I've been pulling together for a while. Organizations tend to get stuck on the “big rollout” treadmill, as though conducting a sweeping redesign over several months is the only way to improve a Web site. I think that's crazy. Jared Spool writes about this in “The Quiet Death of the Major Relaunch”. From the idea of continuous design improvements that Spool talks about, it's not such a big leap to the Extreme Programming concept. And it works very well.
You also chair a content management best practices group at Penn State. Can you tell us about that?
Content is one of the weakest aspects of a lot of sites. Often behind this bad content is the tendency for organizations to think of the Web as an afterthought to print media. The process is to spend a lot of time and money developing and mailing print publications and then turning around and dumping this content wholesale onto the Web.
Add to this that most sites are static. So, problematic content gets locked away in a closet full of HTML files that only one or two people can get their hands on. It's a mess. Penn State certainly isn't immune to this, so I formed the content management group to address all sorts of content issues - content quality, migrating content to new architectures, choosing the right CMS, managing content providers, writing for the Web, and so on.
Any closing thoughts?
Developers stand to gain a lot from making the transition to standards/accessibility-compliant sites: the technologies are maturing; browsers are falling in line. There's a world of open source tools and communities out there. And research on usability and accessibility makes it possible for us to serve our users better than we ever have.
It is an exciting time to be a web developer. Good luck with your conversion to Web Standards, and thank you for sharing your experiences at Penn State.
Thanks for the opportunity to talk with WaSP. You're an excellent group.
Rose Pruyne has been a Web professional since the mid-1990s. She is an applications programmer/Web-database administrator in Penn State's Department of Dairy and Animal Science. She writes and presents on Web Standards, content management, and other Web topics. For more information, see the Penn State Faculty and Staff Directory.