• The website is succinct and have a clear sense of hierarchy.
• The code is well-written so that the myriad technologies that can add extra value can gobble it up & do their thing, so updating it is painless for all involved, & other things I think are important, like a11y.
• The content has relevance.
• Design accentuates content. If the content is weak, the design will only be able to do so much. I am not a fan of “prettyfying.”
• Fallbacks for a variety of scenarios should be implemented. No CSS? No JavaScript? No images? Handheld device? Smartphone? The sooner we start remembering that our work is not just on a 1024 x 768 monitor (or 800 x 600, for some sad folks), the better. The medium is fluid. Our thinking &approach must be, too.

I believe that the more accessible our work is the more flexible it will be. If we keep our markup as lean as possible and move styling & behavior into separate methodolies (css & javascript), then the content will be useful. Microformats & wai-aria are interim patches for what we are currently missing. I’d like to see more power added to the semantic html that devices can then interpret. But, I’d also love to see world peace. ;-)

The people making this argument are presumably unfamiliar with material such as the WAI business cases.

The question was intentionally ambiguous: I wanted to see if we could get some characteristics of “successful”/”good”/”well-made” websites from outside the realm of accessibility benefits, and “map” these to some of the Dutch Web Guidelines.

I’m closing comments on this one, as I’ve got enough material to see that most suggestions not having to do with branding/design/content will most likely fit somewhere within the WAI business cases. I will post my findings shortly.

Thanks again!

trolling(?)
Frank Schaap:

“I’m so glad you’re not really asking the interwebs what “a good website” is, as your title is suggesting ;-)[...]”

Is Stephen really working in such misleading ways? ’cause here he suggests it again:

“[...]Care to chip in? What constitutes a good website?”

The benefits of (accessibility) standards as I see it:

* don’t spend money on javascript font enlargers (a A A+), because this is something the UA is supposed to do, so don’t do it in a non-standards way _for_ the UA

* don’t spend money on read-aloud service, because this is something that the UA should do, should the user be so inclined

* don’t make your website and in particular your webforms fail (silently) because the UA doesn’t support javascript or cookies: users will a) get very annoyed, b) cost you a lot more money because 1) they will call you to do whatever they tried to on your website and 2) they will complain about it, causing you support tickets on top of that

* don’t make your website fail in some sort of UA other than a maximized IE browser window on a Windows PC (well… it’s generally not that bad, but a somewhat older Opera or Firefox on Linux will still show some nasty incompatibilities. In fact, there are still some gemeente websites around built on a (cough) not so recently updated SIM install that actually will load the graphic version of the site in Firefox and then drop you down to the totally inadequate text version because the CMS does not believe your browser can handle their magnificent code)

* you’re not blocking people from accessing information on your website on basis of eye color or belief, why block them because of a visual handicap

* if you’re a government agency of some sort: Webrichtlijnen are mandatory for every government agency by 1 dec 2010: if you’re not already (almost) in compliance then yes, this will cost money and may force you to select a new cms and/or supplier: deal with it. It really does cost less in the long run.

* the early adopters and tech savvy will think you’re cool if you pull off a nice webstandards compliant site.

So, why don’t people already care? Most people don’t care much for technology at all, or maybe just up to the point of “My PC has 3 gigahertz and 1 terabyte of ram” (eh, don’t you mean a 1 terabyte hard drive? No, no, just what I said: 1 terabyte of ram. Uh… yeah…) I mean, people are generally impressed by a turbo and no so much by twin cams and variable valve timings.

Maybe we should have something like a webstandards F1 or WRC… make people want to have that CCS3 badge slapped on their shiny alloy footers. Make it bragable (is that a word?)…

Now how’s that for not worrying about accessibility ?
Questions that arose whilst thinking about this :

• what actually is a website ?
• what is good or great ?

This is , I guess , always related to the targeted audience and the envisioned goal.

Take css zen garden for instance , is this a website ? Does it need to be accessible ? Is it good or great ?

Thanks for the question, enjoy it.

• UA agnostic
• (input) device agnostic
• content before design (design is just one of many added layers)
• semantic code, accessible for humans and machines (data mining)

@Alexander: Great!

@Kilian: Yes, I am quite happy.

Thanks for the suggestions so far!

(much) cheaper development/improvement later on
Less maintenance needed, apart from cheaper development later on
Better availability on mobile browsers/less work needed there
Other people can more easily take the data you make available and present them in new, insightful ways
Accessible, well-built sites are future compatible. They become outdated or obsolete much slower

Happy now? ;)