Inaccessible websites?

[denise]

I'm doing a talk on web accessibility at LinuxConf Australia and would like to give specific examples!

So, gimme your best examples of websites with specific accessibility problems that drive you nuts. Use of tabular data where it doesn't make any sense, sites with horrible contrast or that won't let you change font sizes, restaurant websites that are entirely flash-based, etc, etc.

Also, if anybody knows of good illustrative videos of a) people listening to a screenreader and b) people dictating to their computer, point me at 'em?

Comments

[jeshyr]

I know this is a bit late, but headers that won't scroll off the screen.

Here's an article from Forbes.com: https://www.evernote.com/shard/s56/sh/e2183e64-08bd-40f8-981c-35eec2e8e43b/e50a6ea999bf687050bb77e40dded528

That huge brown header at the top stays there ALL the time, and as you can see once I have increased the text size to something that's readable for me it takes up enough of the screen to be really annoying and also useless because the text all runs into other bits of text.

I'd like to be able to tell the stupid thing to just scroll normally like everything else on the page - if I want to go back and find it I can always scroll up again!

[jazzyjj]

I have a few examples of inaccessible websites, or at least websites which are inaccessible to me and perhaps other screen readers. I'll try to make this somewhat brief, because there's a rather big T-storm brewing outside. But my first example is WebCT, the online academic platform. A few years ago I took an online medical terminology class through a local community college. WebCT was what the college used at the time. Back then I was still a Windows user, and I found most parts of the site pretty much a nightmare to navigate. I was able to do the quizzes with little difficulty, but I couldn't just navigate from one question to the next. I had to basically tab all over, back to the beginning and then use my screen reader's Find command to locate the next question. I had to do this each time I filled in my answer and needed to advance to each new question. Thank goodness for these Find commands! As if that weren't bad enough, the exams were all timed and I found myself getting all worked up just to try and beat the clock. It didn't help that my professor lacked the communication skills necessary to assist me. She even lied once, but it was too late. I was sent to one of the college's campuses only to discover that the exam I was to take had actually been taken off the site. So that was no fun at all. I haven't had reason to test WebCT with VoiceOver or Chromevox, but perhaps I will sometime just for kicks. Then, there is the website for a local taxi service. Their website uses flash, which if done properly has the potential of working pretty well with screen readers. But their flash player does not read well at all. It's a good thing that a phone option is available. The third example I have is a site that was set up specifically for tracking participant goals. This was for a nonprofit organization in which I have been involved since the summer of 2004. I don't exactly know what the issue was as I could never get anyone to help figure it out. But for whatever reason both screen readers I used at the time couldn't pick up some of the side links. But that website has since been discontinued in favor of a more modern approach to goal tracking. Well I said I'd be brief, but it sounds like the storm has passed.