Disclosure and Site Critiques

Comment by Tommy Olsson — Nov 02 2004 @ 2:58 pm

I’d recommend contacting them and letting them know that you’re planning to use their sites as bad examples. I also think you should give them a chance to explain or defend their sites, since there might be a reason why things are the way they are. Maybe they’re releasing a new site in two weeks?

A company that audited our office site used a Swedish company’s site as an example of a totally inaccessible site (all images, no text). They had been in touch with the company and told them about this, and even had their approval(!).

Just my SEK .20.

Comment by patrick h. lauke — Nov 02 2004 @ 3:01 pm

derek…as i always go on about how a lot of accessibility comes down to “triage”, battlefield decisions which – for better or worse – are taken for pragmatic reasons, i feel that it may be worth contacting the webmasters/designers first to find out if there was a specific reason for their errors.

to put it into context: on my work site http://www.salford.ac.uk i have had to make a lot of compromises (most of them due to lack of proper staffing and resources, and a distributed author model which is not suitable for a lot of things). in the site’s accessibility statement i do mention that we *strive* to make the site accessible , and that it’s down to my team’s *interpretation* of things like WCAG. now, many of these decisions i had to take are far from perfect and make me personally shudder, but they have been necessary at the time (e.g. i’d love to get rid of all PDFs, have them as pure HTML documents, and have SMIL captioned videos rather than quicktimes/mpegs with the occasional quick and dirty text trasncript).

my point being: talk to them first, get a dialogue going, make it more like an interview, gage their knowledge of accessibility, and enquire about specific aspects where you feel their sites are failing with regards to accessibility. sure, in many cases you’ll get an “accessibility? whazzat?” reply, but sometimes you may come across some explanation as to why things have been done that particular way (e.g. “our team was cut in half in the last few weeks, the project deadline was brought forward, and something had to give…so management decided to drop the idea of SMIL and just put the windows media files on the site”).

and yes, courtesy also plays an important role. last, but not least: the dialogue may result in business coming your way (“oh, we didn’t know that…tell us more…what’s your hourly rate?”)

Comment by Geof F. Morris — Nov 02 2004 @ 3:07 pm

I can never see where notifying the site owner would hurt. I can see where not notifying the site owner could hurt.

Comment by Derek Featherstone — Nov 02 2004 @ 3:36 pm

Thanks, Tommy, patrick and Geof. For what it’s worth, my thinking is along the same lines as yours — I see that there are some really compelling reasons to contact them first, not the least of which is possible future business from them.

I guess what I’m really struggling with is the notion of obligation to contact them first. In the security world, if you don’t contact the vendor first, you get a lot of people very upset, and expose many people to unnecessary risk. There is an implied obligation to contact the vendor first.

A bit more detail – these are both brand new sites, which makes the fact that they demonstrate such basic accessibility mistakes that much more frustrating.

Comment by Rich Pedley — Nov 02 2004 @ 5:14 pm

I would go along with my esteemed colleagues in suggesting that you contact them first.

However a few other points to consider, make a copy of the relevant page, in case they amend it. If gthey do, you’ll need to ensure the article is updated to reflect it.

What is your job? Web Designer/Developer per chance? So anything you say about others could impact your business. By contacting them first, and I would suggest with a copy of the proposed article, you are covering your own back.

But is contacting the webmaster always the right place to go? Probably not, it may be better to contact the ‘company’ concerned, or at least do both.

But I’d still say ‘go for it’ and let us all know when you do!

Comment by Derek Featherstone — Nov 02 2004 @ 5:19 pm

Thanks for your thoughts too, Rich…

Interestingly, in the process of posting, reading and responding to all of your comments, I’ve actually revised my ideas and I have a better idea than I had originally planned…

Stay tuned… :)

Comment by Nick Finck — Nov 02 2004 @ 6:49 pm

Well, Derek, that is an easy question to ask and hard question to answer.

Ultimately I think you should contact them prior to publication. I say this because that is how I would like to be treated provided that someone was going to publicly critique one of my sites.

We all know what could potentially happen if you do not get permission first. Mr. Scrivens saw this first hand in his critique of Zeldman.com and the comments that came after it.

Worst case scenario is that they deny your request and ask you not to publish their company name anywhere in the article (though you could probably use “a industry leading textile company” or similar if you feel you don’t want to cut out the “story” part of that process.

Best case scenario is that they let you publish it and look to you for advice (a new project?) on how to go about fixing the problems (who knows, maybe they don’t know they are problems yet).

The interesting thing about this whole issue is that based on what I understand is that you are not a designer or someone involved directly with these sites. Point being, it’s great to write articles about sites and projects you have been involved with (like the Examiner article on Digital Web Magazine), but being outside of that core group makes a critique more of unsolicited advice… which can be ok, but often interpreted as a bad idea.

We can shoot fish in a barrel all day if you like, but I’d much rather spend my time showing off a great catch… pointing out the positives of the great sites rather than the negatives of bad sites.

Comment by Tommy Olsson — Nov 03 2004 @ 6:24 am

Obligation? No, I don’t think so. It’s a matter of courtesy, that’s all. I can’t see that a company could legally prevent you from criticising their public web site.

The interesting question is what happens if you contact them and they ask you not to give them bad publicity. That’s when your conscience and social pathos kick in. I don’t know what I would do in a situation like that.

Comment by kartooner — Nov 03 2004 @ 9:17 am

I agree with Nick. Contact them first before you publically critique their sites. It’s the respectful thing to do and not only that, it will allow them to prepare for the critique itself and capture your suggestions for improving their sites to better support accessibility.

Comment by Sylvie — Nov 03 2004 @ 9:29 am

Well, as somebody who has been used as an example of what not to do (bad use of colours on a web site) and who only discovered it through my referrals, I can tell you that I wish I had been contacted by the person who created the example list.

There are several explanations why a web site can be delinquent on a particular aspect of usability or accessibility, and I would guess (or at least I hope!) that it’s rarely because the creator is deliberately flouting usability/accessibility recommendations.

By the way, don’t journalists warn companies when they’re about to run a negative news item and give them a chance for a rebuttal? (or is that only in the movies?) You might do the same thing for these two sites.

And yes, as soon as I became aware of the problem, I changed the colour scheme on my web site.

Comment by Joe Clark — Nov 04 2004 @ 3:29 pm

If it’s a large commercial site or even a prominent personal site that had recently trumpeted its redesign and the many qualities it had, you certainly don’t have to contact them before hand. They put themselves out there *first*– with the spin that their site is better, no less. Well, as the saying goes, fact-check their arses.

I can see notifying the owner of an older site or a site that doesn’t really make much of a claim about its compliance or accessibility. I have taken both routes at different times.