What was the actual prize, nothing at all, a few web links to help google page rank!

I had the same concerns about the linited number of judges and that one of them had wasted my time asking me to a job interview where he took copious notes on evaluating accessible design. I had no chance of getting the position, not because my skills were lacking, but because I am not so placid as to accept the staus quo and I do not suck up to the Australian government’s AGIMO for training work like Vision Australia seem to.

A review of the Australian AGIMO awards:
http://www.hereticpress.com/Editorials/Editorial06.html#awards

I do not have any confidence that anyone from Vision Australia is able to objectively evaluate any site for accessibility. I made a formal complaint to Vision Australia about their recruitment process which wasted my time.

The award seems biased to me, especially from the small number of judges finding in favour of one company frecklecreative.com.au who had two entries in the final six sites. I have reviewed the finalists for accessibility, only one of them had a large text option.

The only difference from the AGIMO awards is that sites used validated HTML and validated CSS, there was no higher standards of accessible design, there are some pathetic Error 404 pages.

The award is better than the Australian government awards from AGIMO, but it does little for accessibility.

My brief review of the McFarlane award finalists:
http://www.hereticpress.com/Editorials/Editorial06.html#McFarlane

Tim Anderson
The Webmaster
http://www.hereticpress.com
http://www.hereticpress.com/Dogstar/Access/index.html#skipnav

It is all at the site, but I probably should give a little more info here about the judging process. Yes, we did want to keep admin on this to a minimum, and we actually think we have come up with a pretty good way of doing so: a much fairer way in fact than making cost a barrier to entry. IN the first phase of judging entries will be assessed for their adherence to best practices in accessibility and standards based coding (correct and valid use of CSS and HTML). Doing this is in fact a fairly routine matter: you just run the site through a validator. Based on the results of the survey John did last year for his WE05 presentation,

http://www.westciv.com/style_master/house/good_oil/best_practices/index.html

it is our prediction that a lot of sites will get knocked out at this stage. Many more in fact than if we had charged an entry fee. And the beauty is that adherence to best practices in accessibility and standards based coding is in fact an extremely important aspect of achieving excellence in web design in 2006.

But at the same time your critique could well be valid – thanks for bringing it up.

Now: back to your Pina Colada!