Episode 49 of the PodLeaders show - 28 mins 34 secs
My guest on the show this week is Paul Walsh. Paul is the CEO of Segala, the first Certificate Authority worldwide for Web accessibility, providing a Certificate and Trustmark to help Web site owners demonstrate their commitment to web standards and compliance with legislation.
Segala have just released a new Firefox plugin called Search Thresher. Search Thresher allows users to selectively find Web sites which claim conformance to standards and best practices in standard web searches using a method called Content Labelling.
I invited Paul to come on the show to explain this, so here are the questions I asked Paul and the times I asked them:
Paul, can you start off by giving us some background on yourself, who is Paul Walsh and how did you come to be CEO of Segala?
And what does Segala do? - 02:07
You were talking about web accessibility and web standards, why are they important? - 03:37
Oh? It is a legal requirement in some countries to have your site accessible? - 04:57
So commercially, the argument for accessibility has more to do with Search Engine Optimisation than to do with accessibility… - 05:54
What about Web Standards then, is that different from accessibility? - 07:05
If I am a web designer, where is the best place to go to get information on accessibility and web standards? - 08:05
There are online validators which can validate a site to see if it is accessible or web standards compliant, is that the kind of thing you are talking about? - 10:58
So who do you go to to get your site certified? - 12:32
Once a site is verified, isn’t that just a snapshot in time, I mean, sites that are frequently updated, what are the chances that a new article will break the site’s compliance? - 14:21
You are about to launch a plugin for Firefox to help in this process, can you talk a bit about that? - 16:34
Do you want your plugin to become redundant and its functionality to be plugged directly into search engines? - 22:15
Have you been talking to the search engines about their taking in the functionality of your plugin, and if so, what was their reaction? - 24:12
And finally, will Segala be targeting RSS search engines and will the plugin work for RSS search engines? - 25:58
Download the entire interview here
(13.1mb mp3)