James Bennett wrote:
And yet, in many other industries, "I was doing my best" would be considered a completely unacceptable response from a contractor who failed to adhere to the standards of that industry. If, for example, a construction firm puts up a skyscraper that doesn't adhere to building codes, do they get to say "Well, we did our best, but it's just so darned difficult to follow every bit of those standards"? Do they get to mumble about how they just haven't had time to pick up new versions of the building codes and learn how to comply with them?
You make a very good point here and, indeed, I have come across this very same attitude, however there's is an important distinction that can be seen between the use of standards-based web development and that building-a-skyscraper analogy.
In the case of failing to follow building standards or codes of practice, there are serious penalties enforced if such standards are not followed properly. For example, failing to follow a standard could lead to fines, injury, being sued for negligence or, in the very worst case, the whole building collapsing. There's also the issue of licensing. i.e. You need to be a licensed/registered/qualified builder to build a skyscraper, or nearly any building for that matter, and failing to follow standards could result in loss of licence, among many other things.
However, in the case of building a website, there are very few penalties - actually, there are none. You don't need a license to build a web site, you don't even need to be qualified or educated in any special way to build and publish a website. You're not likely to get fined for failing to follow the standards, and not very likely to be sued (although, it has happened for accessibility reasons in the past).
The problem is that many people see the issue as "what will happen if I don't follow standards?"; whereas the questions they should be asking are "what are the benefits of following standards?", "how much easier/faster is it to develop with standards?", etc.
-- Lachlan Hunt http://lachy.id.au/ ****************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help ******************************************************
