Well, seeing as the Golden Spiders are coming up again soon, I thought I'd write a bit of a post about it. When I was researching the awards I came across this forum, which I'm definitely glad to have found.

Anyway, the post is located here:
Improving the Irish Web Design Awards system

I'd be intrigued to hear any feedback regarding the accuracy of what I'm talking about (in case I've misunderstood how these awards work).

More importantly I definitely felt quite inspired by finding: Web Standards Awards

I definitely feel there is room for something like this in Ireland, as I've always been quite disappointed in the standards of coding apparent on websites in Ireland.

We're not perfect yet, but definitely coming a long way towards where we want to be. I've found it a little harder to get things absolutely right using word press over hand-coding, but full standards and accessibility adherence is definitely achievable without too much extra work, and ultimately makes life easier!