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Thread: Re[2]: information for non-profits/Iain
Number of posts in this thread: 4 (In chronological order)
From: Iain Harrison
Date: Mon, Sep 27 2004 2:05PM
Subject: Re[2]: information for non-profits/Iain
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Monday, September 27, 2004, 8:50:23 PM, glenda wrote:
> I like your analogy. Mind if I borrow it?
Not at all.
My children have music lessons at a music school, which is a
not-for-profit. That's true, but the fat cat in charge makes plenty
for the little he does. What astonishes me is that by seeking to get
everything on the cheap, they end up paying more than the commercial
price, one way or another.
> My husband worked for a non-profit four years, til he was recently laid off,
> and the ways they would worm out of paying for external services and USED
> volunteers makes me cringe. Since I no longer required to be loyal, take a
> look at www.neilsquire.ca. For an organization that should be a leader in
> accessibility, I think there is room for improvement. When will designers
> get ALT tags should be EQUIVALENT Information. Rumour is they did pay a
> pretty penny for this site.
Well, I don't think there's room for improvement. I think they
should start again from scratch. I'm not disabled, but I couldn't be
bothered to wrestle with the navigation to see what is there.
The CSS is invalid, the HTML is invalid, and the chance of passing
WAI validation is nil. As you suggest, the alt tags on the front
page are useless. "New Image" is as descriptive as they get!
--
Iain
From: Glenda
Date: Mon, Sep 27 2004 4:05PM
Subject: Re: Re[2]: information for non-profits/Iain
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Iain,
Your description of your kids' school' fat cat -- I thought you were talking
about my husband's ex-boss for sec!
Love your assessment of their site. Perhaps I should now offer them my
services! Can you be a little more specific about your distaste for the
navigation, please? I welcome others' opinions of the site too. I think I
will write a pitch next week.
Cheers,
Glenda
From: Philip Kiff
Date: Wed, Sep 29 2004 7:33AM
Subject: Re[2]: information for non-profits
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About the neilsquire.ca pages. That is a bit of sad news for me about their
site.
I regularly track changes to most major, nonprofit disability-related info
sites in Canada and I remember distinctly when the Neil Squire first
produced a standards compliant page back in 2002 or so. Check out The
Waybackmachine for May 2002:
http://web.archive.org/web/20020527084012/http://www.neilsquire.ca/
They were I think the first in the field in Canada to start using the W3C
logos to promote the standards compliance of their site -- the other leader
in the field in Canada, the CNIB , was using a
proprietary accessibility logo at the time, though the CNIB have now
switched to the W3C logos.
While not perfect, I remember feeling in 2002 that the Neil Squire site was
actually moving more quickly towards a fully accessible site than most other
non-profits in that field in Canada, and that they should be commended as a
leader in the area of web accessibility.
Needless to say, I was surprised to see them taken to task for their site
here on the WebAIM list...and even more surprised to see that indeed, as
Glenda and Iain have suggested, their current site is not really very
accessible at all. It is sad to see that they've actually moved _backwards_
in terms of standards compliance and accessibility. This must have happend
during the last major overhaul of their site I think. In fact, the new site
hasn't actually deleted all the old accessibility info, logo, and link
references from the actual XHTML code, they've simply commented out all the
old accessibility stuff which used to be there in the old design -- if
you're interested, check out the end of the source code page for their home
page and you can see the old code still sitting there.
Philip Kiff.
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From: Glenda
Date: Wed, Sep 29 2004 9:26AM
Subject: Re: Re[2]: information for non-profits
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Philip,
Thanks for your comments. I agree that the last site version was more
accessible, and cleaner and simpler. The only problem I had was with the
message atop the first page:
"An accessible web for all depends upon adherence to standards. You are
seeing this message because your browser does not support important web
standards. Although the content of this site should still be accessible to
you, it will look much better in a compliant browser. If accessibility is
important to you then please take time to read about web standards and how
to support them. You will also find information about upgrading your
browser."
Wasn't sure that was appropriate.
When I do write the ED, I will mention the site has gone backwards in
accessibility. I welcome any other comments others have.
Cheers,
Glenda