So why are web standards important?

Many years ago, I could roughly be characterized as a standards nazi.  And then I started working in higher education!  All of a sudden, it wasn't important anymore.  What was important was banging stuff out the door and making sure it looked decent - not great, but presentable. And, yeah, I'm aware that it's better to use really clean code and make sure all of it validates and separate your presentation and content and write beautiful CSS-layouts instead of tables-based ones, but frankly I'm making crap money (compared to the corporate world) and working way too many hours and not being respected because all I do is "play on the web" and just don't feel like going the extra mile to write code that will make geeks go "ohhhhhhhhhhh....."

I would be shocked if I was the only one who could tell that story.  In fact, I know I'm not as I've heard similar ones from more than a few web people who have somehow stumbled into higher education.  But as professionals, it's time to start holding ourselves to higher standards (no pun intended).   

The problems: 

1) Marketing is about the message, not necessarily about the back end of the technology that's conveying it.  I don't think its wrong that the web is located hierarchically under marketing/communications at many colleges/universities.  In fact, I think that's exactly where it SHOULD be located.  What irks me is that the people who end up managing the people responsible for the web usually have no idea what goes into using it as a tool to convey a message.  Not only that, but many have little desire to learn - they've got their print stuff down and that's all that really matters.  I remember sitting in a former boss's office circa 2004 and trying to explain the W3C and why its important and got a lot of blank stares and nods.  It's not that I think managers should know every in and out, but I think that if you're going to manage something, you have an obligation to bring yourself up to speed with the basics and for that, your employees can be your most valuable resource (assuming you've made good hiring decisions!)

2) Standards aren't rewarded.  We're all stretched to the limit in terms of how much time we have to dedicate to projects and its just human nature to want to spend that time working on the things that are going to get us the raises and the promotions and the accolades. Standards aren't going to do that, precisely for the reasons I outlined above - higher ups don't understand them or why they are important.  So you can spend hours working on them but what they are going to see is a website that, outwardly, basically looks and functions the same and think that you haven't dedicated your time wisely - no raise for you!

Frankly, I don't know how to solve either of those problems.  Ultimately it comes down to a mindset shift in higher ups and we all know that that's something we have little to no control over.  I think continual education (and a little prayer if that's your thing) is really all we have.  Maybe some of the arguments below will help.

So why are standards important anyway?

Way back when many of us first started building websites, we had to muddle our way through getting our pages to display the way we wanted them to because HTML was suppose to be a presentation language.  So we used lots of nested tables and font tags to make everything look pretty.  Then standards came along and those that embraced them found it was like the clouds opening and the hallelujah choir playing.  

It makes your life easier: Separating presentation and content makes it infinitely easier to maintain your content.  This is one possible argument to use with your boss - it may take some time now but down the road when you decide you want every link on our website to be bright red in large font and blinking, I will only have to change that in one place instead of in 5,000!*  It also makes your content degrade as well as possible, given the fact that we have no idea if the pages we create today will be able to be read 100 years from now

It makes your pages more accessible: It doesn't make your pages completely accessible, but it gets you towards that.  How would you like to be the first school sued by the ADA for not allowing people with disabilities to surf your pages?  Potential lawsuits also make good arguments with the bosses....

It makes things load faster: Ok, so maybe this is less important than it was in the days of prolific dial-up, but whether you want to believe it or not people do still use it! 

Improve search engine rankings: Search engines like well-structured, clean  markup, which means more visitors to your pages. 

Better user experience: You don't know what type of device your users will be viewing your pages on but standards can help you be pretty sure that it's going to work on the largest number of devices.  

It's the professional thing to do: You may think "who cares....my salary is a joke" now**.  But ever want to move out of higher education and into the real web world and double (if not triple) your salary? Well you better know standards because you're going to have a tough time getting  your foot in the door at any design reputable shop without them.  

Alright, I'm convinced.  Where do I get started?!

An important thing is to make sure you are referencing reliable content when you're looking for information.  There are tons of books out there at your local Barnes and Noble and loads of useful links out there.  The biggest thing, I think, is that you need to be honest with yourself that this is not an overnight "quick fix" and will probably involve quite a bit of frustration.  And you'll need to weave it into banging the time sensitive stuff out the door.  But I'm confident it can be done and I'm embarking on it here as an example of that.  It's not that I don't have my fair share of things to do....I think it's something that I'm professionally obligated to do.  So look for more blogs on this topic in the future, as I prepare to spend the next several months looking like this at my computer: 

*to be clear, my boss rules and would never make me make every link on a site large, red and blinking

**any references to salary are not a reference to my own being poor...i'm pretty cool with it in fact...moreso a reference to broader higher ed thing of not paying web people very well.