Weblog entry #62 for dkg
See all weblog entries made by dkg.
Sadly, the situation has not changed, a year later. Today, I'm writing to Dan Garodnick, Chair of The City Council's Committee on Technology (and the rest of the committee members), Carole Post, Commissioner of DoITT (the city's Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications), and Jeanne B. Mullgrav, Commissioner of DYCD (the Department of Youth and Community Development, which runs SYEP).
Here's what i wrote:
For the last two years at least, the DYCD's Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP) has been only available to users of Internet Explorer: https://application.nycsyep.com/ Internet Explorer (IE) is only made by Microsoft, and is only available for people running Microsoft operating systems. Users of other operating systems, such as GNU/Linux, Macintosh, or others cannot access the SYEP application process. Even users of Windows who care about their online security or simply desire a different web browsing experience might prefer to avoid Internet Explorer. Not only is the online form inaccessible from browsers other than IE, even retrieving a copy of the PDF to print out and fill in manually is unavailable for web browsers other than IE. What is the city's policy is on access to government sites? Is it city policy to mandate a single vendor's software for access to city resources? Should NYC youth be required to purchase software from Microsoft to be able to apply for the Summer Youth Employment Program? The sort of data collection needed by such an application is a mainstay of the standards-based web, and has been so for over 15 years now. There is no reason to require particular client on an open platform. I can point you toward resources who would be happy to help you make the system functional for users of *any* web browser, if you like. I raised this issue over a year ago (see nyc.gov correspondence #1-1-473378926, and a public weblog posted around the same time [0]), and got no effective remedy. It's worrisome to see that this is still a problem. Please let me know what you plan to do to address the situation. Regards, --dkg [0] https://www.debian-administration.org/users/dkg/weblog/47Feel free to send your own message to the folks above (especially helps if you live in or near NYC)
Finally, Carole Post, the head of DoITT will also be present at a panel tonight in Soho, which i'm unfortunately be unable to attend. If you go there, you might ask her about the situation.
Comments on this Entry
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]
What is the city's policy is on access to government sites?A typo?
Your HTML snippet about "how it should have been done" would be perfect if you also added a target, in order to have the PDF open in a new window.
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]
That's the only way to get anything done. Also, i'd recommend if possible bringing this up at the community board district where the program is run. That will also most definitely help to make it visible and because it looks like an easy win you should be a go.
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]
(kevix)
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]
[ Send Message | View dkg's Scratchpad | View Weblogs ]
<span id="Order" class="font-fake-link" onClick=Download_It("\Documents\SYEP_2010_Participant_Applic ation.pdf")>Full Paper Application</span>where the onClick target is actually a chunk of VBScript!<script language="VBScript"> [...] Sub Download_It(cDocument) HitCountXML.selectSingleNode("values/Item").text = cDocument Set oXMLHTTP2 = CreateObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP") oXMLHTTP2.Open "post", "HitCountXML.asp", False oXMLHTTP2.Send HitCountXML.XMLDocument Set oXMLHTTP2 = Nothing window.open cDocument End Sub </script>All of this could have instead been handled the same way for every web browser ever since 1994: Which would produce a link like this:Full Paper Application
Concerned that the "HitCountXML.asp" won't trigger? If the site admins can't read their web server logs to count the number of hits for some reason, there are still have many standards-based methods that would let a site operator to gather this kind of statistics without breaking every non-VBScript browser out there.
There are occasionally really fancy reasons to optimize a site for superior experience in one browser over another. None of them are relevant for this site, and none of them justify completely breaking simple, standard functionality like hyperlinks or basic forms.
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]