Slashdot Mirror

In the UK we have the Disability Discrimination Act (‘DDA’) ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disability_Discrimination_Act_1995 ) This requires that service providers do not provide a disabled person with a lesser degree of service than a person who is not disabled and that they make reasonable adjustments to facilitate this. Any public website based in the UK would be bound by this legislation. Cases are heard in a criminal court with a jury. Statute law does not define what constitutes a disability or a reasonable adjustment, the courts decide this on a case by case basis. A common prejudice is that people think of disabilities, first as someone in a wheelchair and maybe secondly of a blind person. A disability may in fact be mental, ‘invisible’ (e.g. epilepsy) or in fact any chronic condition that disables someone. The comment “Someone with no legs shouldn't sue Ford because it is hard to drive.” is not relevant because Ford do provide cars that may be driven by someone with no legs- certainly an automatic with hand controls is available in the UK. The linked article specifically mentions ‘World of Warcraft’ which for the terms of the DDA is a web-based business operating in the UK. There is a very clear precedent here with Odeon Cinemas (a UK chain) not providing a website that was accessible with alternative browsers: before http://networks.silicon.com/webwatch/0,39024667,39124215,00.htm and after http://www.odeon.co.uk/fanatic/accessibility/ The alternative of course would be to not do business in the UK

http://www.odeon.co.uk/ works with KHTML pretty well
but why not Firefox? Are they that Stooopid?

They probably got loads of complaints and bundled up a quick Text Display of opening times under the Guise of "We are now Accessible"

They are pig-rich it wouldn't cost them more than £1000 to get their pages to be compatible with Firefox, and probably could be done in a weekend.

To protest just email them info@odeonuk.com

I won't boycott Odeon though, boycotting buying music CDs (after a 12 yr old girl was sued) is as far as I go towards entertainment-strike. RIAA - you lost already +£200 with me! :)

(always purchased CD after sampling them before on PnP)

In the later case, of developing in IE, and not checking with Firefox, does anybody know what the most common things that break are?

Mostly it's javascript based sites, that rely on javascript to display the contents of the page. These sites aren't just broken in Firefox, they're often broken in any browser other than IE and Netscape 4. Yes, that's right: Netscape 4. The crap 7 year old browser that has a market share of probably 0.3%. Look at the code for one of the sites in this article. You'll see things like:

if (document.layers) {
...
}
else if (document.all) {
...
}
//do stuff

For the non-programmers, that's saying "is it Netscape 4? Well if it's not, it must be IE" and not checking for anything else. This is because these people learned to design web sites in 1996, and haven't taken the trouble to update their skills. Any "web developer" should seriously question their sanity when they make a conscious decision to support a dead 7 year old browser.

I have in the past experienced problems with sites that didn't work properly (as recently as yesterday) in Opera, but worked fine in IE. The typical problem was poor web site design.

Make the web a nicer place.

From the actual study located at http://www.scivisum.co.uk/press-releases/200506_Fi refox_Web_Test_Study.htm

"Guilty websites

Odeon (http://www.odeon.co.uk/ a major cinema chain has received criticism for months for accessibility issues - even now its' opening 'splash page' seems at first glance to be working fine but click on the 'enter' button and Firefox users are offered a blank page.

On the Jobcentreplus (http://www.jobcentreplus.gov.uk/ home page, Firefox users find that the 'Job search' button opens a new page, but the user can't perform a search, because the first choice "Select a Job Group from the list" is an empty box.

Online insurance site, http://www.insurance.co.uk/ run by Lloyds TSB works, but gives the user the visual impression that it is broken - menu items have 'missing images' icons in Firefox, but not IE.

Similarly, a FTSE100 tobacco company, British American Tobacco's website (http://www.bat.com/ effectively hides most of it's pages from Firefox users - their menu system doesn't show sub-menu choices if you're not using IE."

Well, thats 4 websites...so, if thats 10%, that means that there are only 40 websites in the UK, according to my Athlon XP 3200+ Clawhammers FPU...

*Why* in the world would a company want their browser to show up as Internet Explorer? The only possible reason is so that websites don't cough when it asks for 'IE 6.x or better', and even that is a thing of the (not so distant) past. Web developers *should* be developing across the board, not just for the IE group.

Yep. Developers *should* be developing across the board. Unfortunately many aren't, or are told to make use of IE only features.

There are also all of those legacy sites out there that only work in IE, for example the http://www.odeon.co.uk/ Odeon Cinemas site - who incidentally tried to sue someone for making an accessible version of the site). Not forgetting the sites that are put together by people using out of date texts and website tools that produce buggy code.

things are definitely getting better, here in the uk the odeon website used to be IE only but now they have a text version availiable.

Slashdot (the rendering bug), Odeon (past the first page), Powerhouse are the ones I've tried in the past week or two that have Mozilla problems. I still use Firefox though, Powerhouse lost my custom because of their IE requirement.

*cough* http://www.odeon.co.uk/ *cough*

(I'm not knocking moz, I love it, just that there are some sites that don't work)

My main annoying site that only likes IE is www.odeon.co.uk Click the first site, and then the next page will have nothing to click on in Mozilla, but in IE fancy clickable stuff will be present. I blame odeon but its an example of people designing for only IE...

For a site that needs IE, try http://www.odeon.co.uk/ and see if you can get past the second page in anything else...

Though admittedly, I don't think the site works that well in IE either...

www.odeon.co.uk I havent been able to use on anything but IE even when trying to skip straight to their booking system. Ah well, crap website ill just pay 50p (GBP) less and buy the ticket on the day..

Now we have a self-described high school webmaster wannabe who knows enough to adhere to standards while the so-called professionals are flipping through their MS certification study guides, so they can lookup which JavaScript hacks work with which versions of IE. Meanwhile, we're all chuckling about prosecution exhibit A.

Seriously, if you are really as described, check out the following:

• Python
• Zope
• PHP

Every once in a while I stumble across a little piece of evidence that suggests we're not all doomed to lifetime of watching the results of other people's bad code. I hope your approach to coding is matched by a healthy appreciation for Linux and all the other Open Source goodies.

I guess that's what happens when you hire someone who just finished reading "Teach Yourself JavaScript in 3 Easy Lessons Using Self-Hypnosis While Sleeping". It's an easy enough language to learn, the trick is knowing when not to use it.

This is only one example out of many.

Many businesses have a security policy which forbids the use of Javascript and ActiveX in web browsers due to the exceptional risks of malevolent attack raised by feeding your computer with someone else's Javascript or ActiveX (with or without signatures).

A web site which requires Javascript or ActiveX to view is locking out potential customers. Design a website using any standard HTML and you will be open for business from most PCs on the planet with a browser. Are you listening Odeon Cinemas UK?