ABC Mobile website fails accessibility test
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The Australian Broadcasting Corporation launched “ABC Mobile” yesterday The ABC advertises for staff who have a knowledge of web accessibility and web standards and so would know its obligations. The site also fails several mobile phone and other web guidelines. As well as the mobile phone compatible web site, there are Apple iPhone and Google Android applications offered. However, the ABC should have put its resources into the basic site, rather than building nice to have, but non-essential features. A test using the Test Accessibility Web tool (TAW 3.0 3/16/09 10:15 PM) against the WAI guidelines (W3C Recommendation 5 May 1999) reported: 1 Priority 1, 14 Priority 2 and 1 Priority 3 problems with the page The W3C mobileOK Checker gave the home page of the new site 79/100 on mobile compatible tests. This would be a good result for an ordinary web site but is poor for a site specifically designed for mobile phones. The web page is designed for smart phones with large screens (about 3 inches and QVGA resolution) and would be difficult to use on an ordinary mobile phone. The page is 38KB: 9KB for the text and 29KB of images, which is too “heavy” for a mobile (W3C recommend 20 kbytes). There are 15 files required to be downloaded (the HTML and 14 images), whereas W3C recommends a maximum of 10. There are numerous errors reported with the HTML coding of the web site. With its mobile service, the ABC had the opportunity to not only provide a general news and entertainment service but one which would be of use in emergencies, such as bushfire and floods. However, by not correctly designing the service, the ABC has limited its usefulness. Currently I am teaching mobile and accessible web design to second year and postgraduate students at The Australian National University in the course “Networked Information Systems” (COMP2410). The ABC home page would not be of an acceptable standard for student work on |
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10 Comments
In regards to sites, which are not developed for sight impared users (trust me there are many) makes a lot of sense just not for accesability reasons.
One good side effect is it will help in getting better rankings in the many search engines.
But it seems that most web developers have forgotton alt tags these days.
Jumping Jesus on a f$cking pogo stick. What a massive whinge about absolutely nothing. For a start, no-one uses ‘ordinary’ mobile phones to view this stuff on, the design has to be tailored to smart phones with large screens. Secondly, no-one gives two shakes about ‘alt-text’, it’s so ridiculously unimportant. I’d be surprised that the article bangs on about it so much.
Except for the fact that Tom Worthington is a well known annoying crank. If he’d actually spent some time being involved with IT and communication design and development instead of imperiously claiming that everyone is ‘unlawful’ then he might be worth listening to. Sadly, he hasn’t. He’s applied the ‘unlawful’ tag to just about every web site he’s ever visited (apparently the internet is ‘unlawful’).
Please Crikey - leave this sort of stuff to Stilgherrian and spare us the pain.
Alt text for images matters a lot to the blind. Including it is not a big ask.
They appear to have fixed the lack of alt text for the images used for a menu on the front page.
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I have an iPhone and I work at the ABC. So I have every reason to be critical of anything the ABC does.
As soon as I saw the message about the mobile website I had a look. After all, it’s free. As a long term ABC staffer, I was a bit sceptical about how good it would be. IT at the ABC is decidedly PC-centric. So much so that they out-source support for Final Cut Pro. But our on-line services have been ahead of the pack most of the time so I was moderately hopeful.
I have to say this is one of the best things I’ve ever added to my iPhone. It is NOT an iPhone application. It is just a mobile-appropriate web site. But it sure works like an iPhone app. In fact it works so well that it’s better than most iPhone apps. I had it on my phone, with an icon on my home page and customised to my locality right down to my local independent cinemas and their screening times (with links back to “At the Movies” reviews of each film on their schedule) in less than two minutes. I don’t know what Mr Worthington has been doing but my home page has all the main links for News, Weather, Sport and the rest in big, capital letters - not a logo, icon, pictogram or whatever in sight.
If only the Crikey daily email looked so good on my iPhone. I’m STILL waiting for a response to recent messages regarding the very simple formatting issue that needs to be addressed.
Thanks for caring Prof. Worthington.
Have you tested Telstra’s sites for accessibility? In my opinion they are all a disaster. I have complained to various Telstra units concerning this, offering them screen shots etc, but have never had a meaningful reply.
Hey, Jobby. You make it really hard for me to not wish that someone poke your eyes out with a stick.
Nice rant Jobby but you obviously don’t realise what accessibility is all about.
Keep up the good work Tom! There needs to be more done on this front.
It might be a bit over the top, but at least someone is doing an in-depth analysis of this because it’s important.
i rather agree with Jobby, but i had never heard of Tom Worthington. According to the ANU website, Mr Worthington is an adjunct lecturer, not a “senior professor” - whatever that is.