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Hurricane Katrina Snafus Underscore Importance of Standards

December 10, 2005 Blog No Comments

By not writing to standards, the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency has created an unnecessary hurdle for many hurricane victims seeking aid who have already endured too much.

Jim Rapoza rants about the importance of content standards in a recent column for eWeek entitled FEMA’s Internet Explorer-Only Form: Just What Katrina Victims Don’t Need. Jim’s voice is an important one and underscores the need for organizations to adopt standards that provide access to content to all, regardless of platform, operating system, or

browser version.

Rapoza asks: “Didn’t anyone at FEMA stop to say, “Hey, you know we have to serve all the people, not just those on Windows. Maybe we should rewrite this application to work on more browsers? Did anyone even realize that this form may very well be a violation of Section 508, the accessibility law that applies to federal agencies?”

Find out why Rapoza thinks developers don’t use standards and why this situation has got to change!