One thing that my colleagues and I encounter on occasion is IT departments being unhelpful or damn right obstructive to anything we might be trying to implement online for their company. Certainly there are exceptions to the rule but for the most part IT don’t want any web development companies moving into what they think is their domain.

For a lot of IT departments there can be serious divisions with outside operators or even other departments in a company. Over more recent years the marketing department has strayed into the IT space and by some it is met with horror.

I’m not totally blaming those in IT having this reaction. Being in IT can be one of the most thankless tasks - no one knows you are there until something goes wrong! When things are going great you are just invisible!

So why do IT departments seem so threatened by an online team working on the company projects?

I think the first reason is ownership. IT departments have felt they ”own” anything related to technology - the website and online presence fall under this. Therefore they should be the only people to touch it - there seems to be a fear that anyone else will break it! Also to certain extent the website is an extension of the IT department that does get noticed by people so losing this might also lose them some of the credit they receive.

There also seems to be a fear that someone else treading into their usual haunts might show them up in some way and therefore count negatively against them.

Finally I think there is a certain arrogance of some members of IT that they can turn their hand to anything technical whether that is setting up a new server or writing a new e-commerce website - it’s only software after all?

So what’s my answer to this? Well from a professional perspective it’s more annoying than anything else. We’re both trying to provide a service and no matter what the IT department does I’m not going away - being obstructive will just waste both of our time. It’s never the intention of a web company to show up anyone internally - the two disciplines are closely related and complement each other. IT departments that have been open to this change have found that we can work together closely and can help each other out significantly.

My second point is that web development is no longer just the domain of programmers and designers - if you want a website to work hard you’ve got to see it as a marketing tool. In addition there are a great deal of other disciplines in play here other than the HTML. IT need to realise this is a specialism that crosses over to other areas than their department.

IT departments are essential so no matter what the online bods do they are safe. Just let us work together and both our lives would be a lot easier.

I’ve just read an excellent article about blind users still struggling with computer obstacles. Now I can only comment from a web perspective but it seems to me people are still missing the point when it comes to accessibility.

Firstly accessibility doesn’t just apply to blind or partially sighted people there are many other groups that it can advantage from the physically disabled right though to dyslexics and even the elderly.

Creating an accessible website is seen as a chore and perceived as difficult to do when the reality is that when developing using web standards and best practices you are nearly there. Adding other accessibility tools to a site may take a little extra time but think about the huge untapped market that you are opening your website up to! There are 8.6 million registered disabled people in the UK alone. An excellent article by WebCredible shows how much an accessibility can increase the reach of a website.

A couple of comments on the original article show how much people just don’t get it:

“When I’m trying to convince the suits how important it is to code our web pages to the W3 standards for accessibility I never get very far arguing that it is the right thing to do for visually-impaired users. It just doesn’t seem to be all that important to them.

I have much better luck when I point out that compliance with these standards helps out the biggest blind user on the Internet; that is to say Google. Search rankings they care about.”

Again the argument that it’s “the right” thing to do doesn’t usually wash when it comes to business but the extra reach from an audience (and potential new customers) and also search engine penetration perspective is a difficult one for “the suits” to ignore.

“Sorry to bust the thread going here but computing has for the most part always been a visual thing and probably will be for a while to come. The last thing needed in this world is more guidelines or legislation telling us how to do things. I sympathize with people with disabilities but when you start suing private business over accessibility issues, the sympathy stops there.”

Why does accessibility stop computing being visual? It doesn’t. Websites that create a text-only version of a website show little or no understanding of what accessibility is about. All these websites do is create a two tier system with a text-only website that doesn’t provide the same user experience as the graphical site. It’s just laziness.

“Its time the disabled learn that their disability is not caused by everyone else on earth. Nor is it the responsibility of others to help them overcome it on demand. The disabled have no more right to demand that others provide for their needs than I, as a diabetic, have a right to demand that sugar no longer be used. The principle is the same.

I adapt at my own expense and effort and you should too. If you can’t, you will have to depend on other’s voluntary charity and not act like a thug and use the gun of government to fulfill your whims.

Its too bad you are disabled but its not my fault nor is it my responsibility to fix. If the government says I must then to hell with government! I am not your slave nor are you mine.”

Again a total misunderstand of what can be done or the advantages of providing access to these groups. No problem - carry on as you are going and other companies will be happy to take the customers that you don’t want to spend your “expense and effort” to attract.

I do apologise if I have taken any of the quotes out context as I can’t personally comment on anything but website accessibility however I do find they cover a lot of arguments I hear about online accessibility.

Web 2.0 causes more of an effort for accessibility. Essentially any AJAX used must have a fall back to ensure everyone can use applications. In some cases this might mean the fall back user interfaces might not be so interactive but they should provide the same functionality as the whizzy scripts. Again there is an argument here to do this for the addition audience and search engine access (large areas of some AJAX sites are just search engine no go zones). However I believe a lot of this lays at the door of AJAX framework providers. When I use an AJAX control why shouldn’t this be built into the control rather than me needing to have two versions of the page? Certainly some are taking this on board but other could take a more inclusive attitude.

I wrote a post the other day about the increasing use of mobile Internet and said that standards were in a mess currently. I have to take this back to a certain extent after I decided to investigate exactly how I could start developing for a mobile audience.

Standards have existed for some time and it’s more the case that the number of different browsers and screen resolutions available make things a little tricky for a web developer. However if you are following best practice for standard websites the leap to mobile shouldn’t be too painful.

Generally speaking developing for XHTML Basic 1.1 which is the basic standard level of supported by browsers at present is your starting point. Anyone using XHTML will find it easy to adapt to with just a few limitations. There is also a subset of CSS called Wireless CSS that can be used. Making sure you avoid objects such as flash, client-side scripts and also limiting images to maximum width of 120 pixels (to allow for the smallest screens) should make sure you get a success on a wide range of devices. Otherwise it’s just best practice - no table layouts, use accesskeys (0-9 work well on mobiles) and make sure your site structure is concise - people want to find things even quicker on mobiles and can easily get lost. It’s recommended to keep links to a maximum of 10 per page.

So go forth and dot mobi with the following guide as an excellent starting point.

Dot Mobi - Mobile Web Developers Guide.

For most this screen resolution has been gone for some time however from a web development perspective a lot of websites still ensure that 800 x 600 screens have no horizontal scrolling. This was originally because it was thought a large enough percentage of visitors were still using this resolution however the fact that some high profile (and benchmark) website are still optimised for 800 x 600 and above certainly hasn’t helped to see this limiting factor being removed. A lot of people have been saying this for a long time - Screen Resolution and Page Layout.

The new style that BBC News have just adopted shows that they now think this small resolution is now dead and finally we can use some of the unused browser space. Isn’t it so much easier to read? Lets hope everyone follows the lead if they haven’t already.