New Initiatives in Web Standards Education

Plaster Student Union Traywick Parliamentary Room

When you go to a Web design/development conference, you are largely preaching to the converted: everyone understands why Web standards are the way to go, and knows the big picture. But how do we push the message outside this select audience? Even today, a scarily low number of web sites pass W3C validation.

One of the main reasons is because education in Web standards is a very hit and miss affair. Another is that many people feel that they don't need to bother with Web standards. They can still earn their crust by churning out the same stuff they have been for years, so why should they suddenly have to put extra effort in?

To help improve things, many initiatives are being started to provide extensive learning material, course structures and guidance for teaching "the proper Web standards way." In this talk, I will discuss the most common arguments for not following Web standards and how we can refute them to get rid of the excuses and build a good case to sell Web standards to many different stakeholders.

Presenter