[thelist] Question of Accessibility

[Liam Delahunty]

James S. Huggins wrote:

<quote>
I am looking for someone who can tell me with some authority whether this
site is "accessible" or not
http://www.lmaeronautics.com/palmdale/lerc/index.html

NOTE: that it requires Flash.
</quote>

Accessibility is not a definitive, there are grades of accessibility. In my
*opinion* this site is not accessible.

I think Nielson has a grading system, check out his site.
http://www.useit.com/.

As the site uses flash and doesn't provide an alternative (even if it's just
a plain text of the catalogue) then it's not accessible to whatever
percentage of people that don't have flash installed, don't have it enabled,
can't use it at work, or don't have the necessary bandwidth to view. Blah
blah, if you aren't too bothered about those people, then there are several
other problems with this site including text resize issues, recognising
links, behaviour of the shopping system* and  interactive elements (forward
and back on pages that don't need them).

* The behaviour of the catalogue is strange (to me) and would fail most (of
my) accessibility tests, lets say you've clicked on a link, on the next page
when you are shown the products one would expect to click on an image for a
closer look, and to click on the number (and just what does that mean to a
customer?), the description or even the price to add to a shopping basket.
If you want people to print off a form, they will need instruction on the
home page to let them know to keep records of what they want.

But accessibility is a wonderful dream that we can only address with a
clients help. If they aren't bothered and would rather have a real cool logo
(and in this example the logo animation is good!) than people using their
site, then as long as you TRY to help them you're doing enough. After all,
you can't build what they won't pay for. Trust me, that way financial ruin
will lie.

Oh, and in childrens items*, baby grows shouldn't have collars, they get
chewed on and covered in vomit.

best,
Liam
(*with a very new, very precious 5 day old baby girl, Maisy.)
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