Hello Sam, You may recall the run-in I had with a major UK supermarket and its website a couple of years ago. I spoke to one of their guys, who was quite dismissive when I said the site was useless to many blind users, but at least he was available, which was not the case with the lamentable UK Govt sites (a lot of whose problems are due to reliance on the EDS company, boo-hiss).
The supermarket got some bad publicity when blind customers were told to use online ordering instead of the previously available phone-in system. (There's a growing discrimination by the BBC and others in favour of SMS messages instead of email, phone or conventional mail.) A recent radio programme about the problems faced by the disabled demonstrated the poor performance of a Virgin company website when visited with screen reader software. Sir Richard Branson's team got on the case in double-quick time. The supermarket now offers an alternative site to any user with JavaScript disabled -- I don't know if it's selectable by the hoi-polloi. They've turned it to their advantage by getting an award from the RNIB, the UK's major organization for the blind, yet the site uses a page background colour that isn't in the "Websafe palette" (so there's a dithered pattern in Exploiter). So, if there's something in it for them, whether prestige and awards or less complaints and a healthier bottom line then they might change. But as long as it's cool to use flashy techniques and NOT CARE about tripping up a proportion of their visitors there's a problem. From my point of view I want to use CSS more extensively but the Netscape 4 series botch the page-display rather than ignoring stuff it doesn't understand. I could easily ignore Netscape4.x, but I mustn't! Maybe in five years' time... but there would still be a few people left to annoy. As to how to help the webmaster you contacted, you could find him an award to apply for (or create one yourself!) and point him to these online tools: Web Page Purifier http://www.delorie.com/web/purify.html Web Page Backward Compatibility Viewer: http://www.delorie.com/web/wpbcv.html Lynx Viewer http://www.delorie.com/web/lynxview.html Search Engine Simulator http://www.delorie.com/web/ses.cgi -- this will show how useless an over-graphic page design can be. Hopefully, he'll find this all very useful and proceed to: http://www.delorie.com/donations.html There is also the question of SERVICE. The webmaster is providing a service to his client and the site's visitors. If he's only interested in showing off his use of a non- standards compliant technique the site owner should hire someone else with a more mature outlook. The designer SHOULD have his ears wide open to any feedback. Best regards, Jake Young
