We don't need no education

It is no news to anyone who reads this blog regularly that the amount of pointless and waste of space Government websites out there bothers me. It seems that not a week or so goes by without some new offering of Internet nightmare from the Government. Last month for example saw the launch of a site under DirectGov especially for kids to learn about how national, regional and local government worked.

Now, one of the fundamental requirements of all Government website according tot he Cabinet Office guidelines is this wonderful thing called "accessibility" under the W3 compliance standards. The bear minimum that the Cabinet Office requires of departments and site is the single A standard, whilst striving for AA (or even AAA if you're really good).

You'd think that a site specifically designed to be an information portal for children would be very geared around accessibility wouldn't you? After all, its all about brainwashing teaching the leaders of tomorrow about their "rights and responsibilities" yeah?

Errrr..... no. The Kids Direct site, I'm afraid to say, doesn't even meet single A standard. Amusingly they even have an accessibility statement that says they are "committed to providing a website that is accessible to the widest possible audience, regardless of technology or ability." In fact, not only does the markup language fail dismally (see image below), but the site is predominantly in flash which means it largely useless to huge groups of users.


Note: Before anyone suggest this site is not accessible, I tried to scan it but it's too big it seems. However, I make no claims to be accessible anyway so I don't care.