# Web Designers: Are We Screwed? (Court rules against Target on website accessibility) **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 4, 2007, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/web-designers-are-we-screwed-court-rules-against-target-on-website-accessibility/421543 "2007-10-04T20:13:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Khadaji](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Khadaji](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khadaji)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2007, 1:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/web-designers-are-we-screwed-court-rules-against-target-on-website-accessibility/421543/21 "2007-10-05T13:36:17Z")
Count me in with the people who hate the Flash web sites. It may be convenient for the developers, but I as an end-suer I hate it. Usually I just close it down when I find it is flash-only. ---
**Author:** ![Racer1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ee59a6/32.png) [@Racer1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Racer1)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2007, 1:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/web-designers-are-we-screwed-court-rules-against-target-on-website-accessibility/421543/22 "2007-10-05T13:39:25Z")
Even so, couldn’t you just get around it by hosting the site in another country anyway? ---
**Author:** ![black\_rabbit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/f19dbf/32.png) [@black\_rabbit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/black_rabbit)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2007, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/web-designers-are-we-screwed-court-rules-against-target-on-website-accessibility/421543/23 "2007-10-05T13:52:47Z")
[QUOTE=Khadaji] …I as an end-suer I hate it… [/QUOTE] Heh. Anyway, me too. I hate, hate, hate flash when it’s used to do things that are perfectly acheivable with plain old html, css, and graphics. Thankfully, it seems to have gotten better lately. If the site itself isn’t text-only, the flash portions aren’t absolutely critical to using the page. ---
**Author:** ![Duckster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/duckster/32/1244_2.png) [@Duckster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duckster)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2007, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/web-designers-are-we-screwed-court-rules-against-target-on-website-accessibility/421543/24 "2007-10-05T21:13:17Z")
[QUOTE=Racer1] Even so, couldn’t you just get around it by hosting the site in another country anyway? [/QUOTE] Not if the owner of the site is based in the US. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2007, 12:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/web-designers-are-we-screwed-court-rules-against-target-on-website-accessibility/421543/25 "2007-10-09T12:55:12Z")
[QUOTE=Mangetout] I agree - I’ve been using StumbleUpon a fair bit lately (as well as some other social bookmarking stuff) and it’s got so that if I arrive at a site and see just a blank screen with a little ‘loading’ progress bar - indicating that it’s a flash-only site, and the content is significant in size/complexity - I click away before it gets there. Am I missing something lovely? Quite possibly. I don’t care. [/QUOTE] Hope it’s OK to bump this thread like this - I have nothing much to add regarding the main topic (which looks like it has been talked out now anyway), but I just wanted to post the perfect example of the sort of thing I’m talking about above. > **[Selected / Antenna Design](https://www.antennadesign.com/)** Absolutely typical of an arty/design website - Maybe the site owners _just don’t care_ if I don’t bother to check that my system is compliant to the list of requirements, before attempting to enter. Maybe in fact they actually _don’t want me to enter_ - maybe I’m not good enough or something - that’s the impression it gives me, anyway. \ I’m gone. ---
**Author:** ![Wallenstein](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/b5a626/32.png) [@Wallenstein](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wallenstein)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2007, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/web-designers-are-we-screwed-court-rules-against-target-on-website-accessibility/421543/26 "2007-10-09T14:21:18Z")
[QUOTE=Magiver] Questions for anyone in the know. How do you make a visual site on a computer compliant to the blind. . [/QUOTE] Don’t think this has been mentioned… “blind” in this case is a bit of a catch-all term, there are plenty of users who are “legally blind” but still retain some degree of visual capacity. So many “blind” people will quite happily use the web, as long as sites have certain features: - high-contrast colours - large fonts - compatibility with screen-readers ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2007, 2:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/web-designers-are-we-screwed-court-rules-against-target-on-website-accessibility/421543/27 "2007-10-09T14:27:34Z")
True - another thing (well, a variation of what you said) is font scalability - if the text is embedded in some object such as flash, it can’t be enlarged by the browser so readily as text served up in HTML. ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_Robson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gary_robson/32/3448_2.png) [@Gary\_Robson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Robson)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2007, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/web-designers-are-we-screwed-court-rules-against-target-on-website-accessibility/421543/28 "2007-10-09T16:27:26Z")
[QUOTE=Mangetout] True - another thing (well, a variation of what you said) is font scalability - if the text is embedded in some object such as flash, it can’t be enlarged by the browser so readily as text served up in HTML. [/QUOTE] HTML as originally designed is amazingly accessible: Web content scales to fit the window it’s in, a quick keystroke enlarges and reduces the text, pictures can have “alt” descriptions, navigation links can be assigned hotkeys, and so forth. It never ceases to amaze me how many Web designers intentionally override these features, locking the page width (which makes you scroll horizontally on a small screen or leaves half the window empty on a large one), specifying font sizes in CSS using pixels so they won’t scale up and down, inserting nav text as images so it can’t scale, and so forth. Is it laziness, or is it control freaks with print design background that can’t give up any control over appearance to the end-user? ---
**Author:** ![Gaudere](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e495f1/32.png) [@Gaudere](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gaudere)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2007, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/web-designers-are-we-screwed-court-rules-against-target-on-website-accessibility/421543/29 "2007-10-09T17:00:48Z")
> [@](#): > > Is it laziness, or is it control freaks with print design background that can’t give up any control over appearance to the end-user? Well, sort of the latter…it’s easier to unlock page width or not specifiy font size, actually. But few are the pages that are readable in 3200 wide or 48 point. And they use image text because they want to use a font that is not one of the scant handful that most browsers can view. Anyway, even with pixel size specification, you can zoom in/out (IE) or increase the font size anyway (FF). ---
**Author:** ![DSYoungEsq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c6cbf5/32.png) [@DSYoungEsq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSYoungEsq)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2007, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/web-designers-are-we-screwed-court-rules-against-target-on-website-accessibility/421543/30 "2007-10-09T17:29:01Z")
[QUOTE=Mangetout] Hope it’s OK to bump this thread like this - I have nothing much to add regarding the main topic (which looks like it has been talked out now anyway), but I just wanted to post the perfect example of the sort of thing I’m talking about above. > **[Selected / Antenna Design](https://www.antennadesign.com/)** Absolutely typical of an arty/design website - Maybe the site owners _just don’t care_ if I don’t bother to check that my system is compliant to the list of requirements, before attempting to enter. Maybe in fact they actually _don’t want me to enter_ - maybe I’m not good enough or something - that’s the impression it gives me, anyway. \ I’m gone. [/QUOTE] Not sure I understand your complaint with that site. Are you saying you would prefer they didn’t have a front page that warns you that their site uses design features you aren’t going to be able to access without certain software upgrades? You would rather that you simply ended up with some sort of endlessly loading page, or with a stuck feature? Or are you saying they shouldn’t be using the plug in in question at all? ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2007, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/web-designers-are-we-screwed-court-rules-against-target-on-website-accessibility/421543/31 "2007-10-09T22:44:50Z")
[QUOTE=DSYoungEsq] Not sure I understand your complaint with that site. Are you saying you would prefer they didn’t have a front page that warns you that their site uses design features you aren’t going to be able to access without certain software upgrades? You would rather that you simply ended up with some sort of endlessly loading page, or with a stuck feature? Or are you saying they shouldn’t be using the plug in in question at all? [/QUOTE] None of those - I would like to see some actual _content_ on the home page. Something that might give me some idea as to what the site is about - then I can make an informed decision whether to check my system for compliance and if necessary, upgrade, before entering the full site. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2007, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/web-designers-are-we-screwed-court-rules-against-target-on-website-accessibility/421543/32 "2007-10-09T23:14:55Z")
And I will concede - if pressed - that I’m being a bit unreasonable about this (go on, try me), but that’s not the point, or rather, _that’s exactly the point_. I’m being a bit unreasonable, but _that’s what people are like_ - if you want them to come into your site, you have to accommodate them a little, or the somewhat unreasonable people (there are a lot of us about nowadays) just _click away from you_. ---
**Author:** ![Mister\_Rik](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mister_rik/32/491_2.png) [@Mister\_Rik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Rik)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2007, 12:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/web-designers-are-we-screwed-court-rules-against-target-on-website-accessibility/421543/33 "2007-10-10T00:55:04Z")
[QUOTE=Mangetout] And I will concede - if pressed - that I’m being a bit unreasonable about this (go on, try me), but that’s not the point, or rather, _that’s exactly the point_. I’m being a bit unreasonable, but _that’s what people are like_ - if you want them to come into your site, you have to accommodate them a little, or the somewhat unreasonable people (there are a lot of us about nowadays) just _click away from you_. [/QUOTE] Yup. I’m currently running Linux on an older Mac with a PowerPC processor. Adobe can’t be bothered to release a Flash player/plug-in for Linux on PPC, and the open-source alternative, a thing called Gnash, doesn’t want to work properly. So I can’t see Flash _at all_ without rebooting into Mac OS X. In any case, it’s been my experience that most Flash-built sites are more form over function anyway, and seriously lacking in content, so I don’t waste my time with most of them. Some of my regularly-visited sites use Flash, but not to deliver their actual content. I have no problem with that. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2007, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/web-designers-are-we-screwed-court-rules-against-target-on-website-accessibility/421543/34 "2007-10-10T01:14:06Z")
You might be a bit on the fringe, but yes - if that site did something on the home page that might make you feel it was worth rebooting into OSX in order to go in and take a look, then you might do that. There’s just no excuse for making your home page look like an error message. ---
**Author:** ![Mister\_Rik](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mister_rik/32/491_2.png) [@Mister\_Rik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Rik)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2007, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/web-designers-are-we-screwed-court-rules-against-target-on-website-accessibility/421543/35 "2007-10-10T01:33:48Z")
[QUOTE=Mangetout] You might be a bit on the fringe, but yes - if that site did something on the home page that might make you feel it was worth rebooting into OSX in order to go in and take a look, then you might do that. [/quote] Of course, I have to switch over to OS X when I want to visit YouTube (which is often). I’m mainly using Linux for Web surfing these days, though, because it’s generally faster than using OS X. I’ve never understood why pages render so much more slowly under Mac OS X than they do under Windows or Linux (even using Firefox on all three platforms). I still run OS X for most other things. > [@](#): > > here’s just no excuse for making your home page look like an error message. Exactly. ---
**Author:** ![DSYoungEsq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c6cbf5/32.png) [@DSYoungEsq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSYoungEsq)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2007, 2:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/web-designers-are-we-screwed-court-rules-against-target-on-website-accessibility/421543/36 "2007-10-10T02:18:39Z")
Hey, you know what? They obviously don’t mind. 😉 Seriously, I imagine they prefer to temporarily at least put up with the occasional person who navigates away to avoid pissing off people with web site content that locks up or slows down their computers. Of course, if you think that they are losing serious amounts of business, try emailing them and telling them that. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2007, 7:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/web-designers-are-we-screwed-court-rules-against-target-on-website-accessibility/421543/37 "2007-10-10T07:22:39Z")
[QUOTE=DSYoungEsq] Hey, you know what? They obviously don’t mind. 😉 [/quote] Maybe - I did consider this possibility in the post (#25) where I mentioned the site, or maybe they just haven’t considered it properly - obviously they have a strong design background - it’s what they do - but as others have noted, design skills/methods/principles that work really well in other media don’t necessarily automatically translate to the web. > [@](#): > > Seriously, I imagine they prefer to temporarily at least put up with the occasional person who navigates away to avoid pissing off people with web site content that locks up or slows down their computers. I’m not saying they should serve up the difficult content on their home page - If their site makes specific demands upon the browser, then there’s nothing wrong with saying so and giving people the choice of entering, or not - but how can anyone weigh up the decision to enter, without some hint on the home page as to who they are and what they do? > [@](#): > > Of course, if you think that they are losing serious amounts of business, try emailing them and telling them that. 🙂 As an experiment, I might actually do that, but this is just one site out of the whole internet, and my point here is not that _this illness exists_, not that I can remedy it. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2007, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/web-designers-are-we-screwed-court-rules-against-target-on-website-accessibility/421543/38 "2007-10-10T13:18:09Z")
Here’s the really daft thing - have you actually looked at the content of that site? There’s not really anything in there that couldn’t have been done with plain old CSS/HTML. ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2007, 1:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/web-designers-are-we-screwed-court-rules-against-target-on-website-accessibility/421543/39 "2007-10-10T13:33:11Z")
[QUOTE=Mangetout] And I will concede - if pressed - that I’m being a bit unreasonable about this (go on, try me), but that’s not the point, or rather, _that’s exactly the point_. I’m being a bit unreasonable, but _that’s what people are like_ - if you want them to come into your site, you have to accommodate them a little, or the somewhat unreasonable people (there are a lot of us about nowadays) just _click away from you_. [/QUOTE] You’re not being unreasonable at all. I do this for a living and have done for more than a decade, and you’re being absolutely completely right, at least in the context of sites that actually want to encourage people to visit. Sure, there are times when Flash is the best solution, but in that case it’s being used needlessly, pointlessly, and prohibitively, and the front page list of demands is so bad it’s laughable. Sure, **DSYoungEsq** , maybe they don’t care. But IME it’s not “the occasional person” who leaves never to return when faced with crud like that, it’s usually a majority. What’s the point of that? As far as I can tell, they’re a business, and the best way to encourage publicising that business is by giving people what you’re about, on a plate. You don’t send a brochure out and then tell people they need to wear special glasses and stand on their head to read it. ---
**Author:** ![Duckster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/duckster/32/1244_2.png) [@Duckster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duckster)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2007, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/web-designers-are-we-screwed-court-rules-against-target-on-website-accessibility/421543/40 "2007-10-10T16:05:58Z")
[QUOTE=Mangetout] Hope it’s OK to bump this thread like this - I have nothing much to add regarding the main topic (which looks like it has been talked out now anyway), but I just wanted to post the perfect example of the sort of thing I’m talking about above. > **[Selected / Antenna Design](https://www.antennadesign.com/)** Absolutely typical of an arty/design website - Maybe the site owners _just don’t care_ if I don’t bother to check that my system is compliant to the list of requirements, before attempting to enter. Maybe in fact they actually _don’t want me to enter_ - maybe I’m not good enough or something - that’s the impression it gives me, anyway. \ I’m gone. [/QUOTE] As simple as it appears to be, the home page does not validate. This in and of itself means the home page is not accessible. That the owner of the site cannot create a simple home page validation does not bode well for the rest of the site. The rest of the site is a very poor implementation of Flash. (The home page calls for Flash 6. Since we’re already up to Flash 8, it stands to reason the site design is several years old. Also, calling for a specific version of Flash often indicates a critical lack of web code design.) All of it could be reproduced using XHTML and CSS. The owner of the site is also the creator of the site. The web developer really does not know what they are doing and from a look at the code, it appears they purchased a poorly made Flash template design and flogged it off as something really nifty. It’s not. They must be great BS sales people from the look of their portfolio, even though they cannot produce decent code. If the Target case goes through, and unless these folks change their tune, they will be out of business. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/web-designers-are-we-screwed-court-rules-against-target-on-website-accessibility/421543.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/web-designers-are-we-screwed-court-rules-against-target-on-website-accessibility/421543.md?page=3)