There are definitely those who seize upon minor issues and turn them into major ones — - but the only people who’s opinions really matter, ultimately, are those who will use your site.

When in doubt: ask the visitors!

This is where the main problem lies, where style becomes more important than content, and that little people trying to build a silly, personal site are made to feel small before they’ve got their first page even up. I’m not going to give up, even if it takes a bit of time, because I think it’s worth the effort (even for a private site) to make it as accessible as possible.

On the other question — - most designers are focused on design. When it comes right down to it, they aren’t thinking about these issues or they don’t care. I don’t think it has as much to do with intent as it does with ignorance.

As much as web standards and accessibility have a much higher profile now than they did in the earlier days of the Internet, it’s still a relatively small area of the overall web design community.

I also wonder what your thoughts are on designers adding a hyperlinking logo to clients websites, without permission.

Do they need to be capable of doing link building, managing PPC campaigns, or analyzing statistics to find marketing opportunities ? No, not really. But they should definitely be capable of developing a site which is well set-up for the implementation of these processes.

Thanks for the question!

Do you think a web developers should have a better understanding of SEO, thus providing their clients with a more rounded product?