The Web Standards Project is
a grassroots coalition fighting for standards
that ensure simple, affordable access to web technologies
for all.
Resources for instructors, Web developers and administrators, last updated 2005-11-17.
Conferences, workshops and Webcasts related to Web standards
“HighEdWebDev is one of the few professional conferences tailored specifically for Web developers working in the field of higher education. This year's theme is Building Connections. Like education, technology has one overriding purpose: to connect. To connect people to each other. To connect pieces of information that form new ideas. And as professionals at the crossroads of technology and education, we build these connections every day.”
How institutions of higher ed are incorporating Web standards into their curriculum or public sites.
Listed starting with the most recent. At the time of each listing, sites were validated using the W3C Markup Validation Service, the W3C CSS Validation Service, and Cynthia Says for Section508/WAI validation.
Valid XHTML1.0 transitional; valid CSS. The adoption of a table-free XHTML/CSS template was initiated in May 2005, and has reached 90–95% of the University of Waterloo campus-wide web space as of September of 2005. Further improvements are in progress.
Valid XHTML1.0 transitional. A few CSS errors, easily fixed. A number of CSS warnings to review. Valid Section508 and WAI. Minimal use of tables for layout.
Tim Hannigan (eduTF-pp) wrote: “...we've re-launched the main Queen's University site from the ground-up in a web-standards inspired approach.
“Key goals to this strategy were:
“The overall reaction has been quite positive and departments have inundated our Office with requests for the templates for their use.”
With an emphasis on accessibility, the site uses table-free layouts, valid XHTML and CSS, and is WAI compliant. “We have taken great measures to ensure that the site is accessible to all visitors… We have also provided an automatically generated text-only version of the site, which is available for people using non-traditional devices, such as screen readers.”
While there is an improper use of fieldset for presentation, and headings chosen for font-size rather than structuring information, overall the site is very well done.
“We are very close to being completely standards compliant and have active projects to convert the straggling departments.” Valid XHTML 1.0 Strict, 2 small CSS errors (top tier), valid Section 508/WAI.
Valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional and valid CSS; table-free layout. Fixed-font sizing creates some accessibility and layout problems when text is enlarged in IE6 or Firefox.
Valid XHTML Transitional, CSS, Section 508
Valid XHTML, CSS and WAI/Section 508; table-free layout. Minor errors in some second-level pages, but overall an excellent example of a standards-based edu site.
XHTML 1.0 Transitional/CSS. Site currently does not validate due to unencoded ampersands, which are causing 70 errors.
All in all, a very attractive site.
XHTML Transitional and CSS. Currently not validating; 13 errors. Would be pretty easy to fix the existing errors and validate.
Valid XHTML Transitional 1.0 and Valid CSS. Tables used for layout.
Site developed by Cameron Moll, Jonathan Linczak, Hiram�s webmaster, Jason Seith, co-developer, and Hiram�s entire web department.
“Did we get everything perfect? No, definitely not. But when dealing with a site of this size, it�s incredibly difficult to maintain perfect markup so that every page validates. But don�t lose sight of what�s most important. As much as I�d like to see every page validate, it isn�t as important as ensuring Hiram College spreads the word in a way that�s easy and rewarding for both the user and the College.”
Hiram College uses Apache Lenya for content management, “a nice front-end to an application called Cocoon, an XML-based web development framework. The beauty of Lenya and Cocoon is that the two are heavily based on web standards (XML is the key ingredient that makes this happen). Even better, given that they�re open-source, we could customize them however we wanted.”
The UFL standards-based site was used as an example when Pennsylvania State University was revising their Web policy.
Dave Shea comments on the Digital Media class at Malaspina University-College, Vancouver Island, Canada (March 2004):
“New this year, the course syllabus has started to heavily promote standards-based design, and as the semester draws to a close it�s proved so successful that a complete 3-credit web standards class is in the works for next year, as well as a heavy bias in this direction across the rest of the course.”
Published by the Web Accessibility Initiative, which notes: “The Web is an increasingly important resource in many aspects of life: education, employment, government, commerce, health care, recreation, and more. … This page is the first in a series of five pages covering the business case for Web accessibility. The five pages, called a ‘ resource suite,’ are designed to help develop a customized business case for Web accessibility for a specific organization.”
The goal of this site is to help the Michigan State University (MSU) community reach the broadest possible audience with accessible, usable and aesthetically pleasing design. “We loaded it with all kinds of new resources, articles, and tools.”
Handy for those hunting down a CMS that generates valid mark-up.
“This site is dedicated to providing knowledge of web design and development. It advocates accessibility, usability, web standards and many related topics…”
Short modules (5-40 minutes) in the form of tutorials, exercises and articles for lesson plans and classroom presentation.
WaSP members “Ethan Marcotte and Molly Holzschlag reveal the proper way to marry presentation and structure to create more compelling CSS designs.”
“With the increasing use of community college websites for student recruitment and services such as registration, distance education, and library research, it is crucial that these sites are designed to be accessible for everyone. This webcast reviews the principles of accessible web design and provides information about on-line resources for additional training, accessibility testing and repair software. The information is especially relevant for administrators and web developers.”
“What do you and your users gain by adopting the newest W3C web standards—XHTML, CSS and DOM? How do web standards differ from current web practice? In this first of several presentations about web standards, we'll examine WHY; following sessions will examine HOW.”
“Following last month's theme “Why Web Standards,” we take the “First Steps to Web Standards” in which is presented a case study in transforming the Web Conference 2005 home page from a table-based design into a standards-compliant design using XHTML and CSS layout. There may be a few surprises, even for the hard-boiled standards designers!”
“In our continuing exploration of Web standards, this month we present a panel discussion of real experiences in transforming existing sites to standards-compliant design. What are the joys and challenges of the process?”
Patrick H. Lauke outlines how Mozilla Firefox can be used in conjunction with the Web Developer Toolbar to carry out a preliminary accessibility review.
Institutional documents addressing Web style guides, best practices, and policies.
Reports on the process of re-designing public sites.
“This paper describes the process of re-designing the CWRL web site and considers implications for the future.”
“Okay, let�s dive right in and examine the process we went through to raise Hiram.edu to the level it�s at today.”
“Log Validator is a web server log analysis tool with focus on the quality of Web documents. Thanks to a modular, extensible design, the Log Validator can help Web authors find the most popular content on their web site that matches a particular criteria.
“The Log Validator was first written with Validation (HTML, etc.) in mind : it can thus help web content managers find and fix the most frequently accessed invalid documents on their Web site, acting as a comprehensive, step-by-step validation tool.”