Target webmasters of public sector IE only websites and remind them of their rules

Posted by jrb on Mon, 10/29/2007 - 16:40Firefox Marketing Ideas

This isn't really marketing Firefox as such, its persuading web developers to write in a browser independent way.

Public sector organisations (those who receive taxpayer funds - eg local/central government, health sector, emergency services, military, schools/college/university etc) have an obligation to make their information (on the web) accessible to as wide an audience as possible.
Exact rules will depend on the country (or State in the USA) you are located in.

This means using browser independent technologies to deliver that information to the clients, because as I've mentioned before, IE only sites aren't accessible to Mac and Unix users.
(Incidentially, there is also the possibility of having it available in a way that doesn't need a computer at all, as this would be necessary for people who aren't online).

So my idea is to target the webmasters of those sites and ask them to update them to be browser independent. How can I find those sites?

Aside from reporting to site administrators (email to webmaster at somedomain.com for example) as you find them, google is your friend:

<a href=http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Best+viewed+with+internet+explorer%22&hl=en&start=10&sa=N>Best viewed with Internet Explorer</a>

<a href=http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Best+viewed+using+internet+explorer%22&hl=en&start=10&sa=N>Best Viewed using Internet Explorer</a>

I suggest that people research the requirements for their own State or country and write to the webmasters of the sites that they find as and when, mentioning these requirements (against the rules for their own area, this is why researching your own area's requirements is necessary).

I'm not too bothered here about personal homepages, but it may also be appropriate to point out the requirements to commercial organisations operating in your area.


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Dutch government web-guidelines
Submitted by ottodv on Tue, 10/30/2007 - 00:29.

Good idea.  

For approaching Dutch sites, here are the government's own guidelines: http://webrichtlijnen.overheid.nl/ . Lot's of references to W3C standards and even an online check, which you can point offenders to.

However these guidelines seem overly strict, but any site that meets them will certainly work for all browsers.

Otto

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Search and destroy (+4 Funny)
Submitted by JustZisGuy on Mon, 10/29/2007 - 22:07.

I don't think searching Google like that will help much. Many bad pages don't say they require IE, they just don't work or don't work right. 

The best approach is to try and think of who is local to you, find their web sites, and examine them page by page. Local is better because if you e-mail them about problems then you have a legitimate reason for needing them to be accessible to you. 

Also, keep in mind, government agencies aren't exactly filled with rocket scientists ready to recode a page at a moments notice.  You have to make them think - which they aren't used to doing. E-mailing saying "your site needs to work in Firefox" is likely to result in "stop right there, we don't support that.". Try: "Your site won't work", they respond: "What browser are you using?" You respond: "It's a Dell".

And be patient and keep pestering them about the site. Government doesn't move fast.  Likely they will send your request to a committee that will initiate a project,  hire some Indians that don't speak English to rewrite the site in Java and then when it is 80% done they will change the specs, scrap what they have, and rewrite the entire site in Microsoft Sharepoint. But I wouldn't actually know anything about that.

 

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Good idea!
Submitted by Kelson on Mon, 10/29/2007 - 18:16.

I like this idea, particularly using search to find pages that need to be notified.

One thing that can help narrow down the list of results is to limit the search to a specific top-level domain.  For example, to target .gov sites, you would add "+site:.gov" to the search phrase, outside the quotation marks, like this:

"best viewed with internet explorer" +site:.gov

Another useful phrase to target would be "requires internet explorer"

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