Accepting code from strangers

We’ve just completed a job for a section of the Department for Education and Science that uses the Directgov brand. As part of that work we were asked to include some code so that the site would be integrated with the overall web statistics analysis package.

In amongst the criteria for Directgov are the requirements that the web pages must be Double-A accessible and be valid XHTML 1.0 Strict. The code that the third party supplier (speed-trap) handed over would have failed on both of these counts – and therefore the same would be the case for all of the pages where it was included. We had a similar experience earlier on in the year with WebTrends.

In this instance only minor amendments were required to solve the problems, but these are the types of additional functionality that are either added at the last minute to a development project or as part of minor maintenance to a live site. In those circumstances it can be very easy to miss the issues as time pressures are higher and the quality control can be at a lower level.

So it’s important to be vigilant & not to trust code handed over by third-parties, but also to make sure that other suppliers are aware of the standards for your website.

quality control, web-accessibility

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