Showing posts with label Square Kilometre Array. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Square Kilometre Array. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Square Kilometre Array Project

Greetings from the National Library of Australia in Canberra, where there is a presentation on the Square Kilometre Array Project (SKA). Not to be confused with Ska Jamaican music of the 1950s, SKA is an international project to build a large radio telescope, part in Western Australia and part in Southern Africa.

The SKA has obvious industry spin-offs in advances in computing and telecommunications, as well a sensor applications particularly for the military.

There is an Australian SKA Office within the Department of Industry.  Unfortunately the Department's website has a number of problems. I found the web page very slow to load so ran the usual checks which I teach to students:
  1. Twelve validation errors,
  2. Mobile compatibility score of 0 out of 100: The web page has  3 critical, 5 severe, 1 medium and 5 low level problems,
  3. Web accessibility: 18 Known Problems.
These easily corrected faults in the design of the web page will make it harder to access and also may make the reader question if Australia can't design a web page, how can it build the world's most advanced scientific instrument?