Cabinet Office Delivers Confusion

2Darren • 19th Oct 2007 • Accessibility

As a civil servant I like rules. Rules help make our life easier, they set us standards to work to and make us accountable for our actions – afterall, like everyone else I’m a taxpayer.

Last week the Cabinet Office issued a “Public consultation on Delivering Inclusive Websites“, guidance to update Chapter 2.4 of the Guidelines for UK Government Websites. The Cabinet Office say the document “covers some of the design solutions to common problems faced by users but is mainly aimed at strategic managers and project managers to assist with planning and procurement”. But does it really?

Let’s look at the current guidelines for UK Government websites and Chapter 2.4 entitled “Building in universal accessibility + checklist“, originally published in May 2002. This chapter is basically a set of guidelines for web developers advising them on issues to be aware of and techniques they can use to satisfy standards. Admittedly now outdated it served a purpose and set standards that in the main were measureable and achievable.

Compare to the latest update and we see two very different beasts and here begins my rant!

The latest offering is 24 pages long yet it’s not until we reach page 16 where the first piece of advice to web developers is offered. At first glance at the document I thought haven’t I seen this before. So off I went digging through my pile of documents tucked away in my drawer until eventually I found PAS78. A few minutes later and yes, as I suspected there are many similarities between these documents. But why bother? PAS78 is great, it gives people an insight on what they need to be aware of and ask for when commissioning a website. So why reinvent the wheel? Leave PAS78 where it is, refer to it but don’t regurgitate the content. Chapter 2.4 has always focused on covering “design solutions to common problems faced by users”. Only this time it’s “some” design solutions to the point I wonder why even bother?

I could rant all day about this but will spare those who are kind enough to read my blog by giving a few examples!

Firstly what does the new guidance say about Images? “Ensure that all images have meaningful alt text.” That’s it. So I have decorative images on my page, am I supposed to give them alt text? Of course not. The current guidance rightly says “If an image is simply for decorative purposes (a horizontal line, a coloured spacer, a transparent spacer or material termed ‘screen furniture’ or ‘eye candy’) and is not essential to the understanding of the website, an empty alt=” ” should be used, also known as a ‘null alt’.” So by removing this guidance we’re now muddying the waters for developers without expert knowledge. Does this now mean when I audit a site and discover alt text such as “right nav go arrow” I ignore it and pat the developer on the back for giving the image alt text?

Example two. “The use of images of text… is undesirable”. Checking dictionary.com one translation of undesirable is “Not likely to please”. So what does this mean? Should or shouldn’t I? Who will I not please and if I don’t please them what are they going to do to me? Images for text is often a bone of contention on NI Government sites, we often have debates of when images should and shouldn’t be used and rarely agree or even totally convince ourselves. Here was an opportunity for the COI to help us out, give us definitive examples.

Lastly and the biggest gripe I have is the failure to include advice on a topic which has caused numerous arguments in my daily job – fixed v fluid layouts. One of my main responsibilities of my team is to peform pre go-live audits on all main NI Government sites. Up until about 18 months ago our stance on fluid layouts was mainly led by our corporate layout standards [PDF]. Any site required to follow these standards has to use a fluid layout. Ok but what about those who don’t? Well we recommend in our audits that they abandoned fixed for fluid. Then along came the eAccessibility of public sector services in the EU report [PDF] and this is where our stance changed.

Section 4.3 of this report, entitled “Common reasons for failure at Level Double-A” has a sub section “Table height/width absolute values CSS absolute values”. It supports the use of fluid layouts and goes on to say “With failure rates of 89% and 74% for the two items reported here, it is clear that such fluid coding of web pages is still not widely deployed.” So taking our line from this report we assumed the COI was saying that all public sector sites should use a fluid layout. So eagerly awaiting this guidance appearing in the revised Chapter 2.4 I was amazed to see no mentioned whatsoever of the fixed v fluid debate. Now where does that leave us?! Do we just ignore this Cabinet Office report. Why was it’s findings not the basis for revision of Chapter 2.4?

I’ve read in various places that some people feel this latest document has a checklist mentality. Personally I feel it’s the complete opposite. It gives a little nugget of advice but is in danger of encouraging developers to take huge strides backwards with it’s lack of definitive guidance.

I wonder just how many people are aware of the updated version of Chapter 2.4 which never seen the light of day? It was sent to my line manager a few years ago when we were asked for feedback. I was proud to have made a significant contribution which was accepted and published in revised drafts. The document gave some really great advice, stuff I haven’t seen elsewhere, at least not all in the once place. Who took the decision to scrap this document and instead churn out the bride of PAS78?

All comments and discussion welcome!