ThePickards
standards, accessibility, and ranting and general stuff by the web chemist

I might have mentioned before, the elder of my two children will be starting school next September, and we’ve had to apply for his school.
There are a number of things you need to consider when you’re considering your son’s primary education, because you know it’s important (it’s one more thing that as a parent, you [...]

Read: Selecting Schools for Sons »

Firstly, what gives me the right to propound my proposed public sector guidelines to you all? What makes me think I know more about accessibility than the WAI or the UK Cabinet Office?
Nothing.
What I do have is considerable experience and knowledge in the field of accessibility, and considerable experience and knowledge of working in the [...]

Read: Proposed Public Sector Web Accessibility Guidelines »

I’m not one of those people who is obsessed with true-crime books; nor do I stare for hours at grainy black-and-white photographs in some Marshall Cavendish partwork about horrific murders, trying to make out a dismembered limb or two.
Nevertheless, for some reason I’ve got caught up in the whole Jack The Ripper genre, and have [...]

Read: Reading The Ripper »

As you may recall, the people behind Public Sector Forums (PSF) are facilitating the creation of a new group — “The Public Sector Web Managers’ Group” (PSWMG). It’s important to stress that it’s something that they are facilitating: they have emphasised that it isn’t going to be their group, it will be an independent [...]

Read: PSWMG: Another Update »

This is the fifth of a five part series on system design, relying on my own experiences and knowledge from working both in the public and private sector.
I have broken down my thoughts on system design into five distinct pieces: user requirements; development standards; usability, code-cutting, and testing and go-live (this article).
Testing
There are [...]

Read: Application Design: Testing and Go-Live »

This is the fourth of a five part series on system design, relying on my own experiences and knowledge from working both in the public and private sector.
I have broken down my thoughts on system design into five distinct pieces: user requirements; development standards; usability, code-cutting (this article), and testing and go-live.
Code should [...]

Read: Application Design: Code-Cutting »

This is the third of a five part series on system design, relying on my own experiences and knowledge from working both in the public and private sector.
I have broken down my thoughts on system design into five distinct pieces: user requirements; development standards; usability (this article), code-cutting, and testing and go-live.
Developer Styles
Bear [...]

Read: Application Design: Usability »

This is the second of a five part series on system design, relying on my own experiences and knowledge from working both in the public and private sector.
I have broken down my thoughts on system design into five distinct pieces: user requirements; development standards (this article); usability, code-cutting, and testing and go-live.
What sort [...]

Read: Application Design: Development Standards »

This is the first of a five part series on system design, relying on my own experiences and knowledge from working both in the public and private sector.
I have broken down my thoughts on system design into five distinct pieces: user requirements (this article); development standards; usability, code-cutting, and testing and go-live.
What is [...]

Read: Application Design: User Requirements »

I’m somewhat of an accessibility evangelist; I am passionately in favour of ensuring that websites are available to all, irrespective of disability. I include in this people using different platforms and different browsers, because I tend to think it’s unprofessional to design a site which only works properly half the time.
Yet my development platform of [...]

Read: Accessibility and .NET »