The Web Standards Project, or WaSP, was founded in 1998 by a group of high-profile Web developers -- including Zeldman -- who were tired of building different versions of every page to support a plethora of incompatible browsers from Microsoft, Netscape and others.

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"The term 'Web standards' didn't even exist back then," Zeldman said from New York, where he still works as a Web consultant.

But succeeding versions of browsers became more compatible with standards and each other, and WaSP scaled back operations in 2000.

Now, Zeldman says the time has come to address the other, possibly tougher roadblock to universal Web accessibility: those who build sites, not browsers. "Though today's browsers support standards, tens of thousands of professional designers and developers continue to use outdated methods" for architecting and building online content, says the mission statement on a new version of the WaSP site to be launched Tuesday.

The result, according to WaSP's statement, is a locked-out audience: "Highly paid professionals continue to churn out invalid, inaccessible sites" unreadable by surfers using off-brand browsers, wireless Web devices or special-access technology for surfers with disabilities.

As site owners become more concerned about government-mandated accessibility (known colloquially in the United States as "Section 508," after the relevant section of the Rehabilitation Act amended by Congress in 1998), Zeldman says businesses are simultaneously looking for ways to reach a wider market –- meaning customers not sitting at a desktop computer –- without spending on additional coding projects.

By conceiving and coding Web content in line with standards defined by the World Wide Web Consortium (aka W3C), Zeldman says, "You don't have to build three or four versions of each page. You don't have to make printer-friendly versions. That's important on the $40,000 contracts we're getting today," as opposed to multimillion-dollar sites built during the dot-com boom.

But compared to getting a few companies to play along, convincing an industry of consultants to focus on standards compliance may be more of an uphill task for the resurrected WaSP. "It's a long battle to convince people who are billing by the hour to change the way they work," Zeldman said in a phone interview from Manhattan.

"We plan to lovingly guide our peers toward accessibility and standards compliance," he said. "And if that fails, we plan to guilt-trip them. And if that fails, we will ridicule them mercilessly, as we once ridiculed Netscape and Microsoft."

If developers won't listen to Zeldman, they might pay more attention to a newer member of the WaSP's steering committee: Tim Bray, who co-invented XML for the W3C in the late 1990s and now runs Vancouver-based Antarcti.ca Systems, a company that does XML-based data visualization.

"I'd like (Web developers) to look at the reality of the modern Web," Bray wrote in an e-mail. "Standards-compliant browsers with beautiful rendering, ADA section 508, the Internet Explorer monoculture under assault from Gecko and non-PC-form-factor devices, Web Services. I'd like them to conclude that the only sane, sensible, affordable way forward is to go standards-based on all their content."

"At one time standards were an optional extra; I just don't think that's true any more."

Bray agrees with Zeldman that a tighter economy should make Web consultants think about their methodologies. "The U.S. Federal Government is one of the good guys in what they say, if (unfortunately) not always in what they do," he said. "But at the end of the day, I think the leadership comes from the market: It's safer, cheaper and better to build your Web presence in a standards-based way rather than otherwise."

Even some of the WaSP's former targets support the renewed efforts. "WaSP is right in pointing out that websites are behind in using standards that are supported by all current browsers," said Håkon Lie, CTO of Opera Software in Norway. "Most major websites can also be improved by removing intricate table layouts and superfluous markup. There is absolutely no need to use font elements anymore."

But one HTML contractor, who asked not to be named, illustrated the uphill battle the WaSP faces in getting programmers to lay aside their old browser-specific tricks: "Do you know how much I get paid for knowing this stuff?"