New disability-focussed NZ accommodation site pops up
I was sent a link to a new NZ-based accommodation site that’s popped up, reviewing/rating establishments based on their level of accessibility. It’s called AccoMobility, and you can visit it here.
Now, while it’s great to see others doing their bit to increase the amount of information available to the disabled traveller, this site (in its current form) is pretty poor. Not only in terms of content, which I’ll cut them a little slack for given their ‘under construction’ notice, but also in terms of design. Every page is actually just one big image, which means you’re unable to resize text, screen readers are useless as they can’t ‘read’ images, and you’re unable to highlight, copy, or paste text or individual images.
AccoMobility is a neat concept, but in its current form performs very poorly on the accessible design front, and in my opinion, needs a major re-work before it goes live (currently slated for June 1).
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I can see why you spotted the problems there so quickly! My eyesight is fine (AFAIK), but I had trouble reading some of that text, and what do you know but I can't resize it in my browser by either standard method (gesture on the trackpad, or shift-command-+). I've fired off an email to them and I hope some notice is taken, because there is a need for a site like this, in my humble opinion, and it would be a real shame if half the people who would benefit from it couldn't use it because of the overly snazzy site design! What happened to the basics of web design? That's the first time I can recall seeing the 'Made on a Mac' badge on a site and feeling ashamed of it.
I had a look at this site after reading these comments and I agree that some of the text is small. But it seems clear to me that the site is in a developmental stage as is mentioned on the home page. The developers have also invited constructive comments to help make it a useful resource so maybe we will see an improvement in the size of the text. I must admit that I actually like the look of the site and I'm keen to watch its progress as more hotels and accommodation are listed. I don't agree with Gilly when she says that the site is "overly snazzy". I think it looks really great and has a lot of potential.
A pity such sites often don’t think about the accessibility of their own web site. Ironic really. To me access means a whole lot moe than ramps
Lynda, I realise that the site is still under development, but am concerned that sites generally begin simple and get complex. This one is already complex enough that making it properly accessible may be a major undertaking.
As to the text size, the problem is not so much that it's small as that it *can't be resized*, even by copy-and-pasting, and presumably can also not be read by screenreaders (because the 'text' isn't, in fact, text, but imagery). When I call it "overly snazzy" I'm am referring to such an abiding interest in looks that the basics of web design–not just the basics of accessible web design–have been neglected.
On the plus side, I received a charming response to my email which tells me that they are certainly open to constructive criticism, at least to a point. They seemed interested in my suggestion that recommendations of "accessible" accommodation might carry more weight if they were backed by user-submitted reviews. As some of us are painfully aware, the average member of the public has a somewhat nebulous definition of "accessible", and a somewhat greater interest in making money than in improving his knowledge of matters he feels don't concern him, which leads to those assurances from, say, restaurant staff on the phone that an establishment is "totally accessible" when actually the three steps to the door are just the tip of the inaccessible iceberg …
They seem to have taken some preliminary steps to improve legibility because I was able to cut and paste the text elements and increase the size in my text editor without any problems… And I see there is now a notice on the home page about their intentions to upgrade the site.
Will need to think about how we can improve our site further for disabled travellers.