From the Blog

Web standards in South Africa – Top 10 SA sites validated

Apr 4, 2006 Code, Internet, Reviews

Web standards doesn’t seem to be a very important aspect of functional web design here in South Africa. Websitewriters.co.za was recently launched to try and help South African designers relise that Web Standards aren’t two words made up by some university graduate, so I thought it would be a good time to visit some of the top SA sites to see if they have adhered to web standards.

You might ask, whats the reason for using Web Standards?
Quote from WebStandards.org: Web standards reduce the cost and complexity of development while increasing the accessibility and long-term viability of any site published on the Web.

If you want more info, read Roger Johansson’s post on Ten reasons to learn and use web standards. There really shouldn’t be any doubting the use of Web Standards after reading that post. :-)

So lets get into the nitty gritty. I used the W3c’s HTML validator to validate 10 SA sites homepages. Below find the results of my little experiment:

  • Mweb.co.za – 302 errors
  • News24.com – 145 errors
  • ITWeb.co.za – 481 errors
  • IOL.co.za – 633 errors
  • Ananzi.co.za – Failed validation
  • Supersport.co.za – Failed validation
  • iAfrica.com – 585 errors
  • CareerJunction.co.za – 50 errors
  • Mail&Gaurdian – 786 errors
  • Telkom.co.za – 29 errors

I’m actually not as shocked as I thought I would be. I almost kind of expected it. Seems like news sites, like Mail&Gaurdian, IOL and ITWeb, racked up close to 2000 errors! Are half those errors even neccesary? I’m willing to bet that if they just used valid HTML elements and attributes, that error-log would almost halve, without them having to tweak any of their CSS files (If they even know what CSS is!?).

With bandwidth and internet speed an issue in South Africa, these sites aren’t helping with their over-crowed and invalid markup. You actually don’t have an excuse not to use Web Standards. So why then?

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  • http://muti.co.za thakadu

    I have to admit hipocrisy here. I posted this on my own site which also gets a dismal score with 124 errors. But on the whole ZA sites are not doing that badly. I did a quick check on the top 3 sites according to Alexa.com and this is what I got: Yahoo: 269 errors, Google: 48 errors, msn.com 2 errors! (I was truly astonished by that last one but check for yourself)

  • http://www.whiteafrican.com hash

    That is an interesting study. I wonder how many website developers even think of web standards. With all of the many things you need to do to get a site up, it’s usually one of the first things that gets pushed to the side in order to finish on a deadline. After the site is up and working, people generally don’t care since they’re working on the next project.

  • http://www.powertrip.co.za/ Jacques Marneweck

    It’s really crazy. At one stage I was saying that it’s crazy that who ever is designing sites to not check that their work validates. Makes me wonder how many web designers pay any attention to detail. Maybe web designers should perhaps get some sort of resource up and running to show these people what their sites could look like with xhtml and css that validates?

  • http://www.jasonbagley.com Jason

    I have always thought about re-designing some of these sites just to show them how web-standards could help and NOT hinder traffic and the flow of the sites.

    Not a bad idea, Jacques.

  • oneafrikan

    I’m kinda glad you’ve (probably the first person I’ve come accross at least) highlighted this Jason.

    What I’ve experienced is that Average Joe Internet User doesn’t really care, Average Joe Corporate Manager (read, people involved in web presences of sites above) doesn’t see it as a priority as it means more budget they don’t have, and most web developers / designers will get away with whatever they can as long as it means they don’t get fired…

    I find this so ironical, in a country that is supposed to be the bastion for democracy and human rights around the world, that this is happening and on some of the largest sites on the SA webosphere. Forget about saving money and making sites faster in a low bandwidth environment, what about accessibility!? In the UK accessibility is now passed as law, and so everyone is supposed to comply.

    What I’ve also found is that South Africans, when affronted with something like this, will get quite arrogant and defensive, especially around the BIG CORP boardroom where the guy being questioned doesn’t even know what semantic markup is – and that is BAD, very BAD. So re-doing their sites in the right way, while a noble effort, might be something that could backfire (lots of time, end result not the one looked for).

    Perhaps a microsite highlighting this, and also highlighting the right kind of help to fix, is in order?

  • http://www.jasonbagley.com Jason

    As a designer myself, Ive always looked towards web standards and accessibility as a benchmark of good / great designs. It sometimes urks me that these designers in corporate companies don’t seem to care.

    Its a great idea to have a site highlighting accessibility and web standards in South Africa, especially the benefits. – I’ll add it to my ever growing job-jar!

    Website Writers is something similar to what you are taking about.

  • oneafrikan

    Yup, looks like they’re coming up with some good content (but some if it is pretty standard too)…

    Keep me posted on that job-jar!

  • Pingback: oneafrikan.com » Web standards and accessibility not really in the UK?

  • oneafrikan
  • lebogang nkoane

    Yeah, I (and the late Sam F. Mugabe) have spend the whole of last year, trying to get our clients, and most important public offices (and thier related counter parts) to address the issue of standards, in fact through our research we were able to link back to access of information, which ironically is in the constituion, for any public office to make sure that they avail ‘relavent’ information to the public, which includes the web.

    Well, you know what they say, good ideas take the back seat when one has to eat.

    but, i would like to collaborate with more people, to setup a ‘web standards group’ for south africa.

    i saw the website writers thing, but i think, we need something more in the direction of section 508?

    anybody interested? i am willing to take it further, hell i’ll supply the hosting for free? and my ‘expertise’?

  • http://www.jasonbagley.com Jason

    Lebogang, can you elaborate on the type of research you were doing? Sounds like something we could use to base the idea of an “accessibility and web standards for SA group / site / document / etc” – not too sure exactly the form should take, but that can easily be discussed.

  • lebogang nkoane

    Ola. Aha the ‘flu’ has is clearing… well we were doing the grant work, going through sites, public office sites, our case was for them,,, started at the top .gov scanned, sampled, right-clicked a lot, to find out what they were building, how they building them, and what they were missing, ironicly the lack of standards is quite standardized.

    As we were doing things, we got heavily interested in accessiblity, from web to the actuall human physical form. People living with disabilities, language barriers, motor skills,,, we complied research proposal, hell we estimated to essentially get a total understanding of everything it would take about 1 year, the proposal is gathering dust, :(

    Alas, I still believe there solution to ‘the lack of standards’ in south africa/africa is NOT to implement as is from our international partners/frieds/foes, but rather to evolve it into our context. Remember kids, english/afrikaans in the next 4 years won’t be only mediums of education, we might start building sites with tswana/venda en-coding’s, wait, i digress.

    what I would like the ‘accesiblity/standards’ thing, is rather a guide, from people of how they have ‘achieved such and such’,,, i don’t think sites that tell people how to comply work, but rather the transition from ‘tables’ to ‘css layouts’,,, nahmean,,, web dsign + web development + web technologies,,, type thing,,, wait my ‘flu drugs are wearing off’…

  • http://www.iamdash.net Dave

    I came across this post after looking at the Vodacom website.
    I am South African, but based in the UK and on a 2MB connection. I had to wait at least ten seconds for the site to load. Then again, this could be the distance (someone correct me if Im wrong). But, I couldnt help feeling for people who need to access these sites (especially such a major player) from a dial-up connection.

    Within the last year, I have become a serious advocate of web standards, as sepcified by the W3C.

    Any ways, after seeing that their home page was image-heavy I did a search for “web standards in south africa”, and here I am. After reading the post, I couldnt believe the amount of errors that some of those major sites are returning when passed through the validation test.

    To quote lebogang nkoane:

    “i would like to collaborate with more people, to setup a ‘web standards group’ for south africa.”
    ….
    “NOT to implement as is from our international partners/frieds/foes, but rather to evolve it into our context. Remember kids, english/afrikaans in the next 4 years won’t be only mediums of education, we might start building sites with tswana/venda en-coding’s, wait, i digress.”

    “what I would like the ‘accesiblity/standards’ thing, is rather a guide, from people of how they have ‘achieved such and such’”

    I’m sorry, but what would setting up ANOTHER W3C/webstandards.org group going to acheive?
    That is why those guys are there. The web is not broken down into various “sub-webs” for each country or community. It is INTERNATIONAL. Setting up sub-groups is only going to make things even worse.

    What would the difference be between a local organisation or international? The language barrier as seems to be your argument? As far as language codes go, Afrikaans,Zulu,tswana and Venda among others are already catered for.

    *****************************

    Web standards should be adhered to and followed no matter where you are.

    If they are followed correctly, then besides decreasing download times and increasing the ease at which these sites can be modified visually (through one style sheet), accessibility (not just for disabled people, but catering for various platforms including PDAs and handhelds) and forward as well as backward compatibility are all added.

    Also, the use of semantic markup can greatly improve your search engine visibilty and rankings.

    Any hoo, my rant over….

  • http://www.jasonbagley.com Jason

    Hi Dave, thanks for stopping by.

    I totally agree with you that in setting up “just another standards body” would be totally useless, but I think setting up some sort of action group or SA web standards brand, might help the cause here in SA. (Think Proudly South African here…). If we had a really awesome web standards brand that helped sites become W3C compliant, and shamed those large corporate sites that just stink of large images and tons of template driven javascript, would get alot of South Africans interested, as well as make them proud of being a South African internet user.

    We big into this whole proudly South African thing, and I think this should be extended onto the web too.

  • http://www.iamdash.net Dave

    I completely agree with you, looking at it from that point of view, some sort of action group to get the big players into realising the importance of standards.

    Any ways…..good luck.
    D

  • http://sinah.org lebogang nkoane

    Arrrrggg.

    I was gonna argue, but me is too lazy. One word.

    context.

  • adrian kirsten

    hey bro,

    I used to work for a internet company, and I can tell you first hand that standards is NOT an issue for them. They simply do not give a shit. In fact I almost got FIRED because I was insisting on implementing standards ( “We told you we would look into your proposal, and the department head does not agree with you and you still went on and spent company time implementing this” )

    It’s sad… oh well…

  • Marius

    How did you get 50 errors on CareerJunction? I only found one? Could you tell me what you classified as errors?

  • http://www.jasonbagley.com Jason

    Hi Marius, I checked these sites in April 2006, so since then Career Junction has had a redesign, and secondly, the site currently cannot be checked as the character encoding for the site is incorrect.

  • marius

    Jason,

    So you are telling me you are throwing mud at these sites with stats that are older than one year? I would have al least expected you to quote recent stats for that privilege.

  • http://www.jasonbagley.com Jason

    Marius, before I throw my toys out of my cot and throw them at you, please check the date that this post was created. April 4th 2006. ;-)

    (Ok, I see that on the left I do not show the year, so you are forgiven. Just check the dates of the comments.) No hard feelings?

    Do you represent any of the sites?

  • mariusmarius

    Sorry Jason, my fault for not noticing it is an old post! Yes I do represent CareerJunction. We spent a lot of time and effort getting our standards right. (Mostly only on the new sites and the home pages.) Changing the old code would cost too much money. We have some of the best people in the industry working for us now, making sure the environments look pretty AND conforms to W3C standards. CareerJunction is slowly migrating all aspects of the environment into Opensource. While we are doing the migration we are paying a lot of attention to the standards aspect. So keep checking up on us, you may be pleasantly surprised.

  • http://www.jasonbagley.com Jason

    I knew I smelt a rat! ;-) kidding…

    I was impressed by the new design which was launched a couple of months ago (I think) and as I said in the post, being one of the top 10 visited sites in SA, you almost have a responsibility towards developing a site that takes things like standards and semantic markup into account. So kudo’s to you folk for standing up and being counted.

  • Antony Carthy

    Cool article, but you haven’t W3C’d this site either…

    I don’t like Internet businesses who don’t create compliant websites. I sometimes wish browsers were not so forgiving.

    To be fair though, I often have to take short cuts in my development. I use the target attribute, and I use a web based WYSWYG editor in my CMS that doesn’t generate compliant XHTML code.

    About 35% of my dynamic sites and almost 100% of my static sites are totally compliant.

  • http://www.shell.co.za Chris Marshall

    My interest and chief concern with web standards is that sites comply with accessibility standards. In South Africa these standards are not stipulated by law, but in certain European and other countries they are.

    We’re always preaching about diversity and equality in this country, but we continuously fail to take into account the rights of disabled people.

    Have you ever seen how a blind person browses the web with a screen reader – it’s incredibly humbling and it’s saddening to know that these people can’t browse South African websites with ease because we fail to adhere to accessibility standards.

    And it’s not just disabled people that benefit from accessible websites. There are people with minor visibility issues who cannot see your text, because the contrast ratio between the fonts and the background is too low and does not comply. There are deaf people who don’t know what your video is about, because you failed to provide a text transcript.

    W3C standards also help towards this because XHTML and CSS standards, when adhered to, help people who can’t use a mouse to navigate your site using just a keyboard.

    Hopefully I can get through to the people browsing your page and they can take an interest in accessibility as well. It’s gotta start somewhere.

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