Comments on: ABC mobile web site fails accessibility test

By: Hugh B

Hugh B — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 01:10:23 +0000

Thanks for pointing this out, Maxine.Firstly, (and not your fault) you are linking to an article I can only see the summary of. Where's the accessibility there? Gotta love that locked off content.True, we don't have access to their decisions, but you do have more to go on than the test results. You can look at the served source code and give us your own evaluation. Andrew has struck on a very important point. What do you think, as an expert, about the site's compliance?The great fail I'd like to see the internal decisions around is the choice to serve this content separately. As experts and trustees of taxed money, they should be able to adhere to the most basic web vision of one resource being consumable by any standards-compliant user agent. Remember Berners-Lee's railing against the .mobi top-level domain?:

"This domain will have a drastically detrimental effect on the Web. By partitioning the HTTP information space into parts designed for access from mobile access and parts designed (presumably) not for such access, an essential property of the Web is destroyed."

I don't think the ABC will single-handedly harm the Web, but this is the same, only using the new "m" hostname.BTW neither Andrew or I are ABC employees.

By: martinjy

martinjy — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 23:00:43 +0000

+1 for Andrew’s comments. Run that automated test on almost any site and you’ll get hundreds of results. Sure, the ABC could (should) have caught a couple of the obvious errors before release, but this is a non-story without some proper analysis by Crikey.

By: Maxine

Maxine — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 23:19:49 +0000

Andrew: it would be great if someone involved in the project could weigh in here and give some explanation about their decision making processes. From an outsiders point of view, all we have to go on is those test results. This whole topic officially open for discussion!

By: Andrew

Andrew — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 22:10:20 +0000

Please don’t base criticisms on automated tests, it shows a lack of understanding of the actual underlying issues. Automated accessibility tests in particular will often return false positives that require an expert analysis to confirm or deny.

I’m not saying the ABC mobile site is without fault, I’m just saying I would rather read an article based on informed opinion and expert review than one pointing out low test scores. Explain the issues! Then everyone can share in the learnings.