Sponge Project Blog ~ Web design in Tewkesbury

I get asked why do I conform to web standards? The answer is quite simply: I want to give our clients quality, accessible and easy to maintain websites. By adopting web standards I can do this.

How, you may ask? Well let me clarify:

• Quality - by utilising web standards it enables us to lower our development costs, reduce the size of our website and therefore in turn allow us to focus on giving our customers and their customers a better web experience. Everyone ends up happy as the end product is polished.
• Accessible - web standards in general allow websites to be used by as many people as possible, be they accessing it through a traditional web browser (Internet Explorer or Firefox), text-based browsers (such as Lynx), screen readers for visually impaired users (JAWS) or even hand held-devices (such as a Blackberry or mobile phone). Therefore our customers’ websites have a wider reach for existing or potential customers.
• Easy to maintain - part of the process of adopting web standards in our development process is separating the content (i.e.: the words and pictures) from the presentation (i.e.: the form, look and feel of a site). Therefore ongoing maintenance or wholesale re-brands are simplified by only updating a few files, rather than every single web page.

We feel that by adopting web standards it allows us to provide a better service to our customers, who in turn can pass these benefits onto their customers - so everyone is happy!

Further reading:

• Web Standards For Business - an article from the Web Standards Project (WaSP) aimed at business people (owners, marketing or other decision makers) on the benefits derived from web standards
• Introducing accessibility - an article outlining what accessibility is and why website should be accessible from the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)