Web Design and Ethics
Tags: ethics, Web Design, web standards
As a qualified accountant who has also worked in the legal sector for a time, I'm well versed in professional ethics, codes of conduct and rules in general.
After working full time in the web design sector for over 12 months, it occurred to me that Web Design is sadly lacking any form of regulation or even guidance as to what is ethical practice and what it is not. We shouldn't need any guidance though; I've always found that ethics are largely common sense but, the fact is, without regulation too many people will put ethics to one side if they believe they can profit by it. It's no different with web design and it really is a case of buyer beware.
One particular bugbear of mine is web sites displaying the W3 standards graphics or text on web pages to indicate they have been designed to web standards for both XHTML and CSS when, in actual fact, they have not. Often a giveaway is when you can't click the image or link itself which would normally take you to http://validator.w3.org and validate the html code there and then giving you a pass or fail for that page.
Any developer could look at the source code of the page and think hang on a minute!!! But what should you the potential client do to check if the web design outfit are as good as they say, or, that your spanking new website they've just designed is standards compliant if they have said it is?
Well, if you the client are suspicious you can do as I do and copy the website address and go an validate the code yourself at http://validator.w3.org. Just paste in the link and hit the check button. If the result is green for a pass all is well, indeed if it comes back red for a fail with just a couple of errors then that's ok too, probably something crept in during a recent update of the website so no big deal, but, if it fails big time, you have to question whether the page was ever valid, and whether someone is trying to pull the wool over your eyes!
For example, one of my competitors who shall remain nameless, displays the W3.org images on their page but without any links to the validator, so you cannot test the page by clicking the images. Hmm....that set the alarm bells off, so I decided to test it. I pasted the link into the validator, ran the check and found the page actually fails with 22 errors and 2 warnings!!!! That's for XHTML 1.0 transitional which is an easier standard to achieve than the XHTML 1.1 strict which eantics design our websites to. You might infer that someones not being entirely honest there and you'd be right. There's no shame in a site that does not validate, it could be an old website, which does not meet the latest standards, but there is a lot wrong with claiming it is something it is not.
Extra care is required when designing a website to meet web standards which takes more time; time writing the code, time validating the output and time chasing down the errors that inevitably creep in. But that's not the point - we're talking about ethics not skills here; if a web design company purports to have a standards compliant website themselves and doesn't, whether they actually have the skills to build you one is irrelevant as what they are doing calls into question their entire code of business ethics.
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