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govex / open-data-portal-requirements

Open Data Portal Requirements
http://labs.centerforgov.org/open-data-portal-requirements/
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Phone usability is a "may" requirement? #6

Open waldoj opened 8 years ago

waldoj commented 8 years ago

Under "Non-Role Requirements" appears this requirement:

Web pages may be accessible on small-screen devices (mobile/smart phones, tablets, etc)

"May"? A recent survey in the UK found that a plurality of people say that their phone is the most important device that they use to connect to the internet. From John Gruber comes this chart of the data:

most-important-internet-device

I submit that it is not longer optional for government data to be readable on a phone.

That said, it's entirely possible that no data repository software is properly responsive. Off the top of my head, I can't think of any that is. If this is an aspirational document, then I encourage you to change this to a "must" requirement. On the other hand, if this is a document guiding software selection by municipalities, and a "must" requirement would eliminate every possible candidate, then I can appreciate why you would have to make this a "may" requirement.

technickle commented 8 years ago

At this point in time, I think a must requirement would eliminate every possible candidate. And while I generally agree that cities should require data portals to work on mobile, it does beg the question of how visitors themselves use the data portals. I would say perhaps catalog browsing and dataviz can be mobile experiences, while API documentation and data review tend to be laptop/desktop activities.