Documenting Change in the Web Industry
I have been recording some of the stories of my students in the Interactive Media Design department at The Art Institute of Atlanta and how they are introducing their employers to Web Standards. The project is called The Web Standards Documentary Project. Our program has been teaching Web Standards since 2002. Throughout the curriculum students learn the benefits of separating formating from structure, building pages with semantic markup, and following Accessibility guidelines. Many of our students have made some significant changes in the industry, and in some cases have successfully converted their organizations to following Web Standards, sometimes teaching courses to their entire team.
It’s not always all smiles and giggles, though. Sometimes students make the case to their employers for using Web Standards, and they are met with significant opposition. I see the stories of failure as important as the stories of success, as it indicates to us what is really causing the slow adoption in the industry. In some situations, we can teach our students how to overcome the opposition by appealing to the business’s bottom line. There are some situations, though, where it’s very difficult to convince an employer that making the change is in their best interest, as the immediate financial costs may be prohibitive.
If you are one of my students, or an alumnus of our program and you have a story to share, positive, negative, or otherwise, please get in touch with me so I can record your story. If you are no longer in Atlanta, I can record you via Skype. If you are an educator teaching Web Standards at your school, I’d love to hear from you too. Perhaps this endeavor could become a larger repository of stories of change.