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Re: Fwd: Examples of bad web page designs, for a presentation

for

From: Bevi Chagnon | PubCom
Date: Aug 27, 2010 9:27AM

There are several websites devoted to this topic, and the most well-known is
http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/

(I did not make up that URL!)

But, what do you mean by "bad design?"
-- bad design for accessibility?
-- bad visual design & aethestics?
-- poor site architecture and organization of the content?
-- poor navigation aides?
-- failure to communicate the message or mission of the site's owners?
-- inaccurate or misleading information?

Just curious!
--Bevi Chagnon

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Bevi Chagnon | PubCom | <EMAIL REMOVED> | 301-585-8805
Government publishing specialists, trainers, consultants | print, press,
web, Acrobat PDF & 508
Online at the blog: It’s 2010. Where’s your career heading?
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-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Birkir Rúnar
Gunnarsson
Sent: Friday, August 27, 2010 11:18 AM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: [WebAIM] Fwd: Examples of bad web page designs, for a presentation

Hello listers

I apologize if this is double postd.
I got no responses to the first one and I suspect it might not have come
through to the list.
Feel free to at least notify me off list that the mail made it through.
Perhaps this horse of a topic is so dead that people don't respond to it any
more, which is fine *smile*.
Happy weekend all.
-Birkir


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Birkir Rúnar Gunnarsson < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2010 16:34:32 +0000
Subject: Examples of bad web page designs, for a presentation
To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >

Listers

I've been asked to give presentations at a Norwegian and Icelandic web
confrerences in the next couple of months. Basic introduction of screen
reading, the challenges it creates and common web navigation problems (short
and general enough so e.g. I can't get into the details of, say, Ajax
accessibility).
I am wondering about a couple of things and samples to give and if anyone
can give me a good web page example of such behavior (I can find those
myself, of course, but if someone knows off them right away, that'd be cool,
also if someone has a lot of experience with such presentations, any tidbits
of knowledge that would be good to cover)?
Firstly at CSUN my colleague saw a presentation, I think from one of the god
folks at W3C, where they had the same ewb site with same looks but two
versions, one that was very accessible, other version was very badly
designed. Visually it looked the same but to a screen reader it was night
and day to navigate. Does anyone know which web site this might be referring
to?
Also I am looking for a few specific examples.
One would be a heading that is created visually by indenting text but not
with an html heading.
Another would be a page using the relative location of the text to indicate
the purpose of a graphic or button, rather than a label (something where the
text clearly shows visually that this button does X, but button is not
labelled so a blind user, not having the benefit of spatial layout of the
page, cannot deduce this from the context).
Then a page with unlabelled edit fields or form elements.
or a page where the labels for all fields are read first and then all the
edit fields come after, leaving the user to guess which label belongs to
which field (I often see this with state/city/zip code in forms, for
instance).
Finally, if anyone knows of an example of an ungraceful recovery, where user
has to use a mouse to get out of a page that'd be kind of neat to show I
think (i.e. gets into a loop where keyboard cannot get the user out of).
Possibly I was wondering of a page with live regions that update, I am not
even 100% sure how that wors with, say, Jaws, I suppose Jaws would ignore
them unless an Aria control was implemented with sufficient priority to grab
focus and move it to the updated area, but I suspect this might be getting
too technical, plus I have to do better studying of Aria myself before
presenting it much.

This is a blindness specific talk. I will point out problems with other
disability groups as well, but the majority of the presentation will be to
explain screen readers and how they are used to access web sites, as well as
pointing out pit falls.
Any feedback/ideas/examples would be very much appreciated.
Thanks guys
-Birkir