Fighting the Good Fight: hesketh.com and the Web Standards Project Promote the Widespread Adoption of Web Standards
Raleigh, NC - 30 July 2002 — As the web becomes more tightly integrated to business processes, business web projects are more than just visual redesigns. A Morgan Stanley CIO survey conducted in January of 2002 found that among the spending priorities for CIOs, the following projects rank highest: application integration, e-commerce initiatives, web site enhancements, XML-based applications, and content management systems.
It's just these types of projects, says Steve Champeon, CTO of Raleigh-based User Experience agency hesketh.com, that "are not only perfect for a web environment, but that stress interoperability across a wide variety of platforms and applications."
But in order for this multi-platform, multi-application vision to become a reality, widespread education and adoption of web standards are a necessity. Champeon continues, "Web standards help level the playing field and provide a more consistent and reliable foundation for future integration efforts and ongoing support and maintenance."
And that's precisely why hesketh.com stands behind the development and widespread use of web standards through its support of The Web Standards Project (WaSP). (See the newly launched WaSP web site at: www.webstandards.org.) Champeon, a founding member and steering committee member of WaSP, explains that the international organization "aims to promote developer education, for both those using the tools to create web content, and those who build the tools themselves."
By offering practical services, such as free hosting and systems administration services for WaSP's web site, hesketh.com helps shore up the hard-won support for web standards. And in the meantime, because each hesketh.com project is standards-compliant, the company offers its clients the benefits of compliance: greater visibility of a web page in web searches, improved results with a site's own search engine, accurate display of content in older browsers, easy conversion to other formats, such as Word documents or databases, and smoother transitions from one programmer to another as projects evolve. All of these benefits give hesketh.com clients a greater return on their web investments, whether through increased business, reduced overhead expenses, or improved user experience.
But standards compliance is about more than making money. It's also about making the Internet accessible to all. When new web browsers and development tools are introduced in compliance with established standards, information is more accessible to people using browsers other than the usual desktop ones-including voice browsers that read web pages aloud to people with sight impairments, Braille browsers that translate text into Braille, hand-held browsers with very little monitor space, teletext displays, mobile phone displays, and other unusual output devices. It makes good business sense to allow access not only to those with traditional graphical browsers, but also to people using text-based browsers, and to disabled individuals using specialized browsers.
"The web was never supposed to be about exclusivity," says Champeon, "but was rather about bridging or supplanting proprietary protocols and file formats with a universally accessible platform for content delivery. Now that the platform is well established on the desktop, there's a natural urge to explore ways in which other platforms may be integrated, or how the web can serve as a delivery or communications mechanism for services other than a static web page. But too many people and companies have thrown their hand in with proprietary and non-standard—or simply sloppy—markup, scripting, and presentation, effectively anchoring their applications to old and rapidly outdated browsers."
About the Web Standards Project
Since 1988, The Web Standards Project (WaSP) has spearheaded the fight for standards that reduce the cost and complexity of development while increasing the accessibility and long-term viability of any site published on the web. WaSP works with browser companies, authoring tool makers, and peers to deliver the true power of standards to this medium.
http://www.webstandards.org
About hesketh.com/inc.
Founded in 1995, hesketh.com is a leading User Experience agency with a focus on web-based technologies. hesketh.com's professional services include usability analysis of web technology assets, strategic planning and consulting, development and deployment of online initiatives, and ongoing support and maintenance. The hesketh.com approach values your ROI, your technology asset's usability, and always emphasizes elegance and functionality equally in the use of Internet technologies.
http://www.hesketh.com
