Page created 11th March 2006. Last updated 26th November 2007. Related pages
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While the former Australian Prime Minister Howard spent public money to have his staff edit Wicki entries on the internet, his communications minister, Helen Coonan overnight, with no debate was imposing censorship on the rest of us. Helen Coonan was going to introduce new Censorship laws when the government should have been going in a caretaker mode before an election which her part comprehensively lost. Coonan at the 12th hour of the Howard government's term was acting with no consultation to stop Australians seeing content not in line with Howard's spin doctors.
Under her plan Federal Police would have been able to inform the ACMA of websites to be blocked. Australian Federal Police could make judgements about what Australians could see and read. ISPs would have been required to "take reasonable steps" to block sites.
More details on the Australian Internet censorship laws and the Victorian racial and religious vilification laws.
Australian businesses generally try to follow ISO standards and follow best practice internationally in business fields, but we also have website standards in Australia, which seem to be ignored and neglected. The Government Information Management Office AGIMO states that "Australia is a leader in e-Government".
Australian government websites had on average 33.7 HTML validation errors. Only two Australian websites passed the highest level AAA accessibility test, most sites do not cater for low vision users, or anyone who cannot use a mouse!
This is a longitudinal study of the web pages below, it started the 13th March 2006 and was last updated on 23rd April 2007. Check if any of these webpages, have improved since 13th March 2006.
While I am taking care to be accurate, due to the number of websites being evaluated, I cannot spend too much time on each page. Please contact the Webmaster, if you have any concerns that your site has been unfairly represented. A review will provide more details of errors and improvements that could be made.
If you do not validate your webpages as error free according to W3C specifications, a search engine could stop indexing your page at any error and your content cannot be found. The ultimate insult to your clients and waste of your time and money is to make a website with entrenched errors in your pages.
Australian Government and minister's websites
Former Prime Minister John Howard Defeated 24th November 2007
Ms McKew will become the first candidate to unseat a sitting prime minister since Ted Holloway defeated Stanley Melbourne Bruce in 1931.
An essential element for any page DOCTYPE was not properly declared. The former Australian Prime Minister's website used a lot of Javascript to preload images and check the browser being used, it should also have contained a warning, if users have Javascript turned off, the <noscript> element. The Javascript type should be in an external file and not in the page, Javascript in the page was not declared correctly as:
onmouseover events could to be matched by onfocus events, so blind users can have the same information as mouse users. The page layout was made with tables, there were no heading <h> elements or paragraph <p> tags to structure the page. Headings should be used with paragraph tags.
I emailed the former Prime Minister's Office in April 2006 regarding these errors, they were polite and concerned about these errors, unlike some other crude Australians, especially Victorian Labor Premiers Bracks and Brumby. The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet replied.
"We recently engaged a consultant to undertake an accessibility review of the site and have documented a list of issues that need to be addressed.
We will amend the site accordingly in the future. http://www.dpmc.gov.au Regards, Web Services".
Over a year later the former PM's consultants had done nothing (an AGIMO or PR spin consultant recommending you get a myspace profile) and the Prime Minister's page remained as it was with a few HTML errors.
You need some help Prime Minister and Cabinet and not from your consultant or AGIMO. Pay me and I would have fixed your html validation errors and given him a higher SEO rating for keyword searches. My service and charges
Hohn Howard's My Space and Google webpages
John's Myspace has 19 serious html errors, including a missing document type, his Google page is a little better with 55 html validation errors. All Howard's sites are inaccessible for a blind person using only a keyboard. How pathetic it is John, like a longing for a by-gone era of Winston and Bradman, old text and dead ideas from the Menzies era transferred to the web. All Howard's sites fail to validate. How dare the Australian government spend taxpayer's or even private money on the promotion of his political ego on a website that fails to comply with Australian government standards. The internet is not a tool of self promotion for Prime Ministerial ambitions.
I reviewed Howard's government Prime Ministerial site and showed his staff how to fix it, but John paid money to have a site that does not comply with the Australian 1992 Disability Discrimination Act. A dud MySpace and Google profiles which breach Australian 1992 Discrimination Laws. If Google cannot make a validated webpage who can apart from me. misrepresentations, downright lies and PR spin John. I think Churchill would tell you to Go away John as I hope the Australian people will do the same later this year.
The opposition Labor leader Kevin Rudd also has new websites http://www.kevin07.com/. His Google page is not so good, 95 errors in Kevin Rudd's google page.
He does inspire much more confidence than Howard regarding technology. I was almost shocked to discover that Kevin's website uses validated html much better than the luddite Howard whose Myspace profile has 19 serious html errors as of 10th October 2007.
Will labor be any better than Howard? They couldn't be much worse! An editorial, Seven questions for labor candidates largely ignored. Vote for the Greens in the 2007 election.
What a media manipulating fraud this former Howard government has been, ignoring advice on accessibility for government websites and then paying public servants to edit material in the public domain to match the spin and lies of the Howard government. Howard is spending a million dollars a day of taxpayer's money on government advertising. Disgusting! A vast IT and media fraud on the people of Australia.
Will sites on Australian history and the Eureka Stockade be able to still publish material?
Mr Howard was elected on a pledge to cut back government advertising, yet he has squandered TWO BILLION dollars of taxpayer's money spent on his self promotion, an absolute disgusting abuse of Prime Ministerial power.
That's an awful lot of schools and hospitals that could be built instead.
The validation errors are relatively minor like a missing end tag for an unordered list, Line 248, Column 4: end tag for "ul" which is not finished as are some end tags for "hr" . There are two broken links on line 376 and line 233 to incorrectly named links or files which no longer exist.
Automated Accessibility tests fail this page maily because some images are missing an alt tag and there is the ampersand error.
When I first tested this site but did not write-up a review, it validated. Some edits have been made in the last year without checking the code, but generally it attempts to provide an accessible webpage. A good site from the Greens. They have many accessibility features ignored by other parties;
meta tags in the header with links to the Sitemap, Homepage and Search page. Well done Greens and Dinesh Mathew, you have made a better site than most other better funded Victoria political parties. The Greens site is a better site than almost all federal political sites, including ones with huge financial resources. The Green's site also includes keyboard shortcuts, a larger text option and skip navigation links.
This site could have won the 2006 Australian e-government awards. There was not much competition. It is as good as australia.gov.au, but needs an accessibility statement and default error 404 page. It is and superior to many other Australian government webpages tested including the Roadready site which won the 2006 excellence award. It includes keyboard shortcuts and tab index keys.
Transitional XHTML could be updated to XHTML Strict. A page update has introduced a minor error.
The Senate's website uses an older HTML version 3.2 which was current before the invention of stylesheets. It uses Javascript to preload images and check the browser being used, it needs to also contain a warning, if users have Javascript turned off. The Javascript onmouseover events need to be matched by onfocus events, so blind users can have the same information. Again, the page layout is made with tables, there are few Heading elements or paragraphs to structure the page. Headings should be used with paragraph tags.
Though the page has improved a little to having only six errors they are major ones such as no character encoding or document type definition.
This webpage was also studied by John Allsopp in September 2005 and it was also error free then and relatively more accessible than other sites John tested.
It is a consistently good and well maintained site, but the document type declaration should have been updated by now from a transitional to a strict document type.
This website was judged the "best government site" in the 2005 Australian NetGuide Awards. You can see that it is better tham most Australian government sites from the complete File Not Found Error 404 page which includes links to the Home page, Sitemap and help pages as well as including a search function. Well done australia.gov.au!
You get my vote for the e-excellence award for govt websites again this year, because there is not much competition in Australia, perhaps apart from Foreign Affairs, but some English sites are still "far fairer" than you.
Many things could be improved though, like adding long descriptions of images and updating the Transitional HTML to Strict, keyboard shortcuts could be added? Generally it uses a good table-less layout.
This site also provides a skip navigation option which helps accessibility. Tab indexes and keyboard shortcuts would be a refinement.
Compare the British Parliament's homepage with it's 42 HTML errors, to the accessibility of australia.gov.au The UK Parliament. The American .gov.com has 51 errors.
This webpage was also studied by Allsopp in September 2005 and it had 21 HTML errors then, so it has improved the HTML validity a lot, but nothing has been done to improve accessibility.
The AGIMO also publish accessibility guidelines for other Australians to follow. AGIMO Guide
It passes validation as XHTML Transitional and also passes basic S.508 priority One accessibility tests, but fails higher accessibility tests.
Single character entity errors are common and are often caused by the character for ampersand "&" which has to be written as & the page seems to sometimes change with additions being made without rechecking the file with the W3C validator? "Inaugural e-Government Awards Launched"- Pages need to be rechecked whenever new information is added.
Transitional XHTML could be updated to the Strict version of XHTML. Uses the deprecated HTML image element "border" instead of stylesheet formatting. On the upside, it does have a stylesheet.
Unfortunately is does not have a skip navigation option or any accessibility features like Tab indexes or keyboard shortcuts.
The AGIMO was incorporated into the Department of Finance and Administration on 26 October 2004. The AGIMO website has lots of pages on "Better Practice" and guides for other government sites but no accessibility statement for users on this site. I gave them a pass having an accessibility statement but it is of no use to a users, but more of a reference for government. The Finance and Administration,accessibility statement for finance and AGIMO.
The finance accessibility page was made with NetObjects Authoring Server 2000. One of two meta tags states that this page is due to expire on 02/05/2006, but it is still there with all its errors on 30th August 2007. What do finance know about making webpages? Not much it seems, maybe AGIMO is constrained by accountants who do not understand technical HTML issues or democratic principles of accessibility and the 1992 Disability Discrimination Act. This is the type of low quality you get if financial accountants calculate that NetObjects can make much cheaper pages than it would cost to employ a HTML and accessibility expert.
This page contains almost no header information as it should, at least to comply with the older Australian Government Locater Service (AGLS) metadata standards.
AGIMO have updated 2005 standards metadata
The header where the metadata is stored is not seen onscreen, you have to view the page source. It has no creation date or author. It uses an old version HTML 3.2, and looks to have been made before Sylesheets came into use almost a decade ago. Newer versions of HTML and XHTML allow better separation of content and style. This page has open tags for bold text all over the page, as well as deprecated HTML Font tags which should be looked after by stylesheets. It mixes up formatting and content in the same document.
Some pictures have no ALT image tags or long descriptions. Table elements are undefined. No stylesheet control of fonts or layout. No skip navigation option and no accessibility features like Tab indexes or keyboard shortcuts.
The finance.gov accessibility statement, is riddled with 46 serious errors, making it inaccessible. AGIMO the peak government body, should be achieving level three AAA accessibility for government webpages, before preaching to the converted stating that they set the standards!
There is a partnership between CeBIT organisers and the Australian Government, through the Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO).
AGIMO is presenting an award 10th May "Australia is a leader in e-Government" said the Hon Gary Nairn MP, who will present the award for the best Australian government website. I asked Gary to consider accessibility in the award criteria.
Thirty five nominations were received for the award. The E-government award winner was the ACT Road Ready website which allows learner drivers to answer some test questions online.
roadready The page is written in HTML 4.01 Transitional. One common standard to underline links has been abandoned, even in the Good Links section, links are not underlined until a mouse passes over them. There is no onfocus equivalent event for mouseover events.
Having just re-checked these award winners on August 30th 2007, not one of them has improved at all. Shellharbour have hunders more erros than the 22 they had last year. The wheat board should have saved a few dollars from the millions in bribe money they gave Iraq to fix their website. It seems that once a flawed webpage is made they have no idea how to fix it or no derire to comply with their legal disability discrimination obligations. These were the best sites awarded prizes by AGIMO, how pathetic this is for the Australia IT industry.
Some of these website have serious HTML errors that will prohibit any search engines indexing their content. No matter how good they think their service or information is, it may never be found if search engines cannot index their pages. Having HTML errors in pages defeats the whole purpose of making information available over the internet which can be found by search engines. Many of these web sites are a beurocratic self indulgence and a complete waste of taxpayer's money. Presenting an award for excellence to them confirms the misguided lunacy of AGIMO.
As one well known Melbourne IT author and Search Engine Optimisation Expert, Ash Nallawalla commented to me, the winner looks designed for programming convenience (or at very short notice), not for ease of being found by anyone.
It is difficult to find the winner in Google/MSN/Yahoo. Ash also commented that I was a bit unfair to single out this little site when it has the same problems as many other Australian government websites. I don't blame Roadready at all. I do blame AGIMO for picking out this site as being excellent. AGIMO are supposedly the peak body ("We lead by example the arrogant AGIMO state") with some intellectual internet savy expertise, yet in reality AGIMO encourage low standards. This little site may be a great resource for ACT drivers (if they can find it) but it does not merit an award for excellence from AGIMO.
A few more comments to give another view other than my own, thanks to Ash Nallawalla
The award winner has no accessibility features at all. Perhaps judges picked it to win because vision impaired Australians are not likely to be drivers. But it still has to comply with W3C standards, which it does not.
The AGIMO lists the winner as "Webtest", ironically a W3C validation test of the winner W3C test roadready shows 42 HTML errors.
It fails basic online accessibility tests for the lowest levels. The six member panel who awarded this website an excellence rating seem to know very little about creating valid HTML documents which can be found through search engines. I was hoping that the AGIMO Chief Information Officer Ann Steward would award excellence to a site that had validated HTML and could be easily found by learner drivers.
It seems to me that AGIMO reward mediocrity and promote low standards. It may provide some useful service to ACT learner drivers, but as an Australian government HTML document it shows how low standards really are in Australian government websites. Couldn't the judges find a nominated website that used validated HTML, why would AGIMO give a technology award to webpages with dozens of W3C HTML errors?
Private Australian industry awards promote better standards compliance, not as high as Hereticpress.com, but much better than Australian government websites. The McFarlane Prize
A true reflection!Gary Nairn should start replacing AGIMO "communications staff" with some real HTML experts before AGIMO damages the Australian IT industry more than they already have.
Award winning sites should be expected to write W3C validated web documents and AGIMO should be promoting international W3C standards.
Australian Interactive Multimedia Association awards 2007
The long list of Judges is next to the large list of advertisers and there are overlaps between the judges and the advertising sponsors. Although accessibility is a criteria, how many judges are accessibility experts? You cannot make accessible website straight out of a box; with Dreamweaver, Adobe Golive, NetObjects or anything else. Not Again! Awards have been made to sites with HTML errors that a search engine many not be able to resolve.
I have not had time to review the accessibility in other areas of these sites, from a cursary glance they appear to all be inaccessible as well as invisible. It is possible for a HTML error-laden site to validate as accessible, but it is rare.
Commercial Web sites like those represented in the AIMIA awards would want all their content to be easily found and also high in search engine results for search terms. These sites have not written HTML for a large non-human audience (bots archiving indexing search engines) as well as humans for the content to be accessible through search engines.
At least these award winners are much better than the offical Australian government AGIMO award winners, but they are not as good as the McFarlane industry award winners who were judged by experts in their fields.
The private Australian web publishing awards presented on 28th September 2006. The Judging criteria. The six 2006 finalists.
1.Verified File Name: moreorless.au.com moreorless.au:Validates XHTM 1.0 Transitional
Two stylesheets print and screen. Validated CSS
A very good Error 404 page with links to the homepage and a search box. Passes the Cynthia Section accessibility test AAA.
Date and Time: 9/28/2006 11:02:30 PM
Uses some Javascript but no warning if Javascript is turned off.
2.Verified File Name: saudajazzmin.com Saudajazzmin.com:Validates XHTM 1.0 Transitional
Providies a validation link at the page end.
Two stylesheets print and screen. Validated CSS
No Error 404 page Failed Cynthia Section accessibility test AAA.
This site also provides keyboard accesskeys and allows skip navigation
A very minor error two links on lines 66 and 68 use the same link text.
While the former Australian Prime Minister Howard spent public money to have his staff edit Wicki entries on the internet, his communications minister, Helen Coonan overnight, with no debate was imposing censorship on the rest of us. Helen Coonan was going to introduce new Censorship laws when the government should have been going in a caretaker mode before an election which her part comprehensively lost. Coonan at the 12th hour of the Howard government's term was acting with no consultation to stop Australians seeing content not in line with Howard's spin doctors.
