Thank you for your response, and thank you for the compliment.

Secondly, the usability section of our Web site is not intended as a sales pitch. It is intended as a service to all our customers and other Web editors, no matter which CMS they are using. We feel that usability and accessibility are important issues, and we therefore want to help Web editors learn more about it. Before launching the usability section on our Web, we suspected that we would receive criticism for not providing it on an entirely accessible Web site. But we felt it was more important to help Web editors learn about this than having the perfect Web site ourselves.

Thirdly, Robert Nyman’s involvement as an article author was a result of a meeting about how to improve EPiServer as a product from an accessibility point of view. Being someone with great knowledge in this field, we invited Robert to participate in our Expert Panel. This doesn’t mean Robert is happy with the accessibility of EPiServer today. Hopefully, his feedback will help in improving EPiServer in this sense.

Finally, the EPiServer team has had accessibility on the agenda for the last two years. Accessibility is incorporated in the development process of new features. We do, however, have older features that were implemented without considering accessibility. We continuously work to improve these to make EPiServer a product with high accessibility. Nevertheless, our aim is to provide a product with high usability and functionality, so it’s always a question of priorities.

PS. We’re sorry to hear you (Henrik) didn’t receive an answer to your feedback e-mail regarding episerver.com. We receive hundreds of e-mails every day, and your message might have been lost or overlooked somewhere. However, you should know that we take great effort in answering feedback. DS.

I’m just saying that if the electropost guys really mean what they’re talking about they should at least answer an e-mail

That I agree with you about, but that’s really up to them to answer to.

The article, to me, is a way to reach out to their customers, to help them understand what it takes to create a good web site. Nothing more, nothing less.

I’ve also had talks with ElektroPost about their templates, amongst other things, so our contact isn’t just about the article. You should also know that I fight for getting a better web, by making it more accessible, semantic and standards-compliant.

But we can’t expect it to happen all at once; I’m grateful for our first initial contact and that ElektroPost are aware of the criticism that has been raised. Then, only the future can tell what path they will choose.

It’s good that this debate is taken to the “big company”, sure, but it seems like talking about CSS in the context of a company that seemingly doesn’t seem to care about it, is just out of place.

Did the ElectroPost company contact you about writing accessible code in their server, or about writing an article to use as a sales-pitch? Unless they also consulted you about code/practises etc, but only made you write that article, it seems to be obvious that it’s just another sales-pitch and nothing else.

And no, of course they’re not. It’s just that they promise a lot without sticking to it, it seems like. And the talk about “old templates” is just bull, since they’re not using “old templates” for their own homepage, are they?

Thank you for the kind words!

Henrik:
I must say that I just don’t get your attitude…
If a company asks an expert for help and the expert accepts he/she losed credability?!
On the contrary you SHOULD credit Robert for helping them and their developers to get on the right track!
It’s true that many EPiServer websites isn’t very accessible due to EPiServers built in (old) templates, but how will this change if they don’t ask the ones who knows how things should be done? Is EPiServer forever doomed to hatered from you?

// Kalle

Thanks! We’ll see about the future, it’s a work in progress.

Henrik,

First, I’d really appreciate if you were to write your comments in English, since many of my visitors are non-Swedish speakers. For those who aren’t, here’s a summary of Henrik’s comments:

Henrik states that EPiServer is, by far, something that isn’t associated with accessibility, and that they for their own web site use a lot of inline events, document.write JavaScripts, using one-pixel-sized images for layouts purposes etc. He also mentions high prices and how different municipalities have had problems from the lack of accessbility concerns in their product.

He links to some screen dumps of the EPiServer web site and exclaims that their web developers will have to face this kind of criticism if they ignore or are too cowardous to answer e-mails regarding this.

Another thing Henrik says is that if I mix with ElektroPost, I will lose credibility in XHTML/CSS/accessibility-circles, but he rounds it off with that maybe even a blind hen can find a grain of corn.

Let me rebut to this:

I’ve had some talks with some of the people from EPiServer, and they are aware that this part haven’t got enough focus. But I think it honours them that they acknowledge this, and that they have discussions with people within this field. It shows that they do want to improve, but everything can’t just become perfect overnight.

When it comes to my part in this:

First, I’ve never stated that EPiServer’s web site nor their templates are perfectly valid and accessible. My article is about an approach to web development and style sheets, and it could have just as likely been published on any other Content Management System company’s web site. The goal of my article, as well as the other ones there in their Expert Panel, is to affect the project managers, editors and web developers who will work the product to take these things into consideration.

If that makes you think I’m a sell-out, I’m sorry to hear that. But I think that if we truly want large companies that affect our every-day life to get better, maybe we should just stop bitching about it, and instead try to help them achieve that if the opportunity arises. I guess this is similar to WaSP’s collaboration with Microsoft to improve their products; we try to make things better and raise awareness, instead of just complaining.

EpiServer om nÃ¥got är väl INTE nÃ¥got man förknippar med tillgänglighet?? Den är väl sÃ¥ lÃ¥ngt ifrÃ¥n tillgänglighet man kan komma?? Testa till exempel att stänga av javascript pÃ¥ deras hemsida. Kolla source-koden de har - de använder inline onevent attribut pÃ¥ sina taggar och en massa “document.write(”);” För ett halvÃ¥r sedan sÃ¥ fungerade inte ens deras hemsida i firefox! (skickade ett mail till dem om det dÃ¥) Deras hemsida är uppbyggd med smÃ¥ bilder som används till att sätta layouten pÃ¥ plats. Pix-bilder eller bilder som även användes när tabeller användes. Riktigt dÃ¥lig kodning alltsÃ¥. De tar sjukt höga priser för att leverera sin server ocksÃ¥, men det är bara en liten punkt bredvid förstÃ¥s, en halv miljon kostade det för kommunen…

Jag snackade med en teknikansvarig i en kommun som hade köpt deras server. Detta är ett citat från korrespondensen, och är förmodligen något som snubbarna på episerver hade haft som sälj-argument:
“När det gäller EPiServers egen webbplats och att den inte funkar i Mozilla fÃ¥r du framföra det till dem. EPiServer följer standard för IE 4.0 vilket man kan ha olika Ã¥sikter om.”

Det är ju sÃ¥ att man kan skratta. Och inte svarade episerver pÃ¥ mitt mail heller. Om du beblandar dig med dem sÃ¥ sjunker direkt din trovärdighet inom XHTML+CSS+accessibility+osv-kretsar…

Men kanske även en blind höna kan finna ett korn?

Once agan, thanks. Nitpicking’s usually good.

Jens, Mats,

Thanks! More and more focus has been put on the interface development through such things as SEO, accessibility and cost savings. About time, if you ask me.