Both sites demonstrate something we’ve never before seen: an administration with a genuine desire to connect with the public. And they’re using the internet to do it. This desire alone is a profound move forward for the country.

What makes it exciting as a web guy, though, is the idea that our government is now demonstrating an appreciation for design, usability, and accessibility* on the web. The fact that these sites validate is big. So is the White House’s new creative commons license on site content.

There are other observations being made around the coolers, though. The code isn’t semantically correct. The site is running off of asp.net. As far as I’m concerned, these are distractions. The negative comments remind me of those coming from the trolls on Zeldman’s post regarding the Apple store redesign. Unnecessary.

Maybe it’s time to cut back a bit on the elitism and recognize that sometimes better comes in steps. What we got today is a really big step.