1 Surveys of Scottish 5/99 Project Web Sites Brian Kelly UK Web Focus & QA Focus Manager UKOLN University of Bath Contents  Background  Summaries of Surveys: HTML Compliance Accessibility Availability on a PDA Availability on the Internet Archive  Implications  Development of a Self- Assessment Toolkit Contents  Background  Summaries of Surveys: HTML Compliance Accessibility Availability on a PDA Availability on the Internet Archive  Implications  Development of a Self- Assessment Toolkit

2 Background To The Surveys QA Focus: Is addressing QA in several areas (e.g. access digitisation, service deployments, etc.) Initial activities are based on areas of expertise of QA Focus Team members (e.g. Web and images) This presentation covers an initial set of surveys concerned with Web access

3 About The Surveys The surveys: Made use of freely-available Web-based services The survey methodology is transparent & usable by all The findings are reproducible The aims of the surveys are to: Identify best practices which can be adopted by others Provide examples of approaches which can be used by projects either individually or in clusters Covered FAILTE, Xgrain, EEVL Computing Gateway, Using Numerical Data, Lemur and e-MapScholar project Web sites

4 Survey 1: HTML Compliance (1) A survey of compliance with HTML standards: Aims to provide an indication of compliance with HTML standards across projects Survey looks at project entry points Survey uses W3C’s HTML validation service Findings: One entry point is compliant with XHTML  One entry point does not have a DTD  Four entry points have no Character Encoding  Three entry points have small number of errors  Two entry points have a large number of errors

5 Survey 1: HTML Compliance (2) Compliance with HTML standards is needed to: Avoid browser vendor proprietary features Maximise accessibility Allow resources to be repurposed by applications other than browsers Allow Web sites to claim compliance with HTML and accessibility standards (which may be mandatory) Discussion: FAILTE shows an attractive entry point which complies with the latest HTML standards Other sites need to address HTML tools and workflow issues

6 Survey 1: HTML Compliance (3)

7 Survey 2: Accessibility A survey of compliance with accessibility standards: Aims to provide an indication of compliance with W3C WAI guidelines across projects Survey looks at project entry points Survey uses the Bobby accessibility testing service Findings: One entry point is compliant with WAI AAA (FAILTE!) Four entry points are compliant with WAI AA  One entry point is not compliant NOTE: Use of automated tools will not detect all accessibility problems.

8 Survey 3: Access Using PDA Why? We can expect to see increasing use of PDAs If Web sites can be accessed on a PDA they are likely to be reusable by other applications How? The AvantGo Web site was used and Web sites made available on a Palm PDA Findings: All Web sites could be accessed on a PDA The entry point for some sites was not held in a project sub-directory so the entire Web site was transferred.

9 Survey 4: Availability On Internet Archive A survey of the availability of project Web sites on the Internet Archive was carried out: This may provide a emergency backup if a project ceases to exist and Web site disappears If Web sites can be stored successfully on the Internet Archive they may be harvested by other mirroring/archiving services Findings: Five Web sites are available in Internet Archive  One Web site is not available NOTE: No archives are available since Nov 2001

10 Discussion Survey Findings: The findings are available at Note that: A “league table” is inappropriate (projects have different objectives, levels of resources, etc.) The findings may need interpretation Support Documentation Where findings show that advice is needed we will advise JISC Advisory Service or produce materials ourselves Initial documents available at

11 Discussion We hope that: The survey findings will be of interest to projects and will allow you to address problem areas and implement examples of best practices You will be able to implement more comprehensive testing across project Web sites Note that: The surveys are intended initially for discussions within projects If serious problems are found QA Focus will raise concerns with the project. If problems are not addressed we will raise the matter with JISC (as we are funded to do).

12 Development Of A Self- Assessment Toolkit QA Focus: Aims to develop a self-assessment toolkit which will allow projects to check their QA procedures in areas including: Access (e.g. Web)  Digitisation Metadata  Software development Service deployment  … The Web surveys are the first step Your feedback is welcomed