3 Comments

  1. jed bailey

    Tony is right in his analysis of so many public sector sites. Far too many carry the baggage of unaccountability, turgid languge and remoteness. The natural tendency towards giving as little information as possible and missing the power of interactivity condemns many sites to the lay by of communication. Yet the web industry has a resposibility too. Hardly any of these sites are designed inhouse and an army of designers, developers and SEO witch doctors have fed off these commissions. It puzzling that government ministers as politicians- in theory so artful and wise when it comes to communication- have been so uncritical in their commissioning.
    Or is web procurement no different than any other government procurement, often criticised for being badly managed, unprofessional and poor value for money.
    Given how much it spends the public sector has done little to champion excellence to the extent that webdesigners would be competing hard to win contracts for their creativity and effectiveness not just a nice little earner. An example is disabled access. The previous government promomised to ensure its own and public sector websites met modern (post 2006) standards on accessibility for the visually impaired. Despite solutions being available the offered option for many sites still costs the user money with browsers and specialreaders. Will it require a court case under discrimination law and more money to get them to care about the end user?

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