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Nicole -> RE: Government Department Websites . . . (5/31/2007 15:58:36)
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Here's what I've decided to do.
Did I tell you guys this? I forget. I few days ago I also found what I believe to be the site the Project Brief was based on. It's the site of another branch of their department (in another area of the State) a fairly brilliant site in appearance only, but that's all the untrained eye will see. Having been told who I'm competing against, not by name but I was told 2 designers from Sydney, one from Melbourne etc. I'm therefore of the belief that the designer who designed that site will be tendering.
But that other designer used tabled to lay that site out, the site isn't accessible, and when a screen reader is asked to read it, it sounds atrocious.
I don't have a laptop to take to my client to show the pitfalls of this other site - but I also don't want to be finding fault with another site and another designer, especially as I'm only assuming that they're a competitor. If they are though, this guy will have that extensive site in their portfolio, and I don't really have one to show them of the same scale.
So, as Caz mentioned, I'm going to go in hard on the accessibility angle, not by itself though, but by backing up my statements with parts of all the State Government Guidelines to support me, I'm going to mention the Standards that they are supposed to comply with, for no other reason than the State Government has directives to their agencies - I might imply that it's also the right thing to do but I want them to know that I've done my research into State Government procedure and know more about them than they do.
For the record, the NSW State Government's Guidelines regarding Accessibility are among the most extensive I've seen, so are the Guidelines they have written about planning, commissioning and maintaining a website. They are so brilliant and mention Accessibility in almost every point in the 200 - 300 pages I've printed out that I was going to post them here somewhere as they are also provide a good (basic) checklist for people new to accessibility. They're mostly up to date, February 2007 and mention very current thinking and links to further information.
Back to the directives I've found - as mentioned they may not even know about them, but I'm wondering why on the phone the other day I was told that the site would need to be started by June 30? I'm guessing that that was because they did know about this deadline and want to be able to report that a new site is at least underway.
It also makes me wonder though, whether this other designer, if tendering, was informed about these guidelines and the rest of us are just quoting to make up the numbers. I'm aware that a Government Department has to get tenders from at least 3 sources before choosing a contractor.
Edit: I planned to also back up what i was saying by including a sentence to the effect that "no other regional branch's website currently follows these guidelines. But unfortunately 1 of the 12 uses CSS layout and another one does use accessible forms - that was what I was going to say to get around finger pointing, but it's going to be harder to write now that two separate sites possess some accessibility standards, separate sites mind you, and neither of them are this brilliant looking site that they've based the Project Brief on.
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