July 29, 2003

Challenges of Forward-thinking Web Development

CSS guru and (until a few weeks ago) Netscape Standards Evangelist Eric Meyer has written a somewhat depressing post on the state of standards, accessibility, and forward-thinking developers. He tells a story of a web developer working for the US Congress, and his challenges getting any of his colleagues to use modern coding practices and accessible design techniques.

This is the kind of situation that I think is more common than many of us realize, and it's a serious impediment to the forward motion of the Web. The enormous amount of wasted bandwidth and time such coding practices incur would, if translated into dollars, very likely cover a significant chunk of the U.S. national debt. There are too many Web authors stuck in 1999, and not enough who are looking forward to 2005 and beyond. What words, what memes would penetrate their shells and point them in the right direction?

He has more questions than answers right now. I feel his pain, on a number of fronts.