Site Review: 2002 Olympics

Andy King writes: "If Olympic Web sites were an event, Salt Lake wouldn't even take the bronze. Our review reveals some gnarly accessibility moguls." There's another review of the site which mentions the many accessibility problems that the Sydney Olympics had with its website. The site doesn't appear to work at all with konqueror.

Comments

Biggest "accessibility mogul"

[InterruptDescriptorT]

The biggest accessibility mogul in my mind, though it really doesn't have to do with the usability of the site per se, is the restrictive conditions put on independent Web media reporting on the games. I believe the IOC did not give credentials to most Web media and have been very active in shutting down and censoring both pro-athlete fan sites and anti-IOC sites. (In fact, wasn't there an athlete who was enjoined from posting even an Olympic diary, Weblog style, for fear of IOC reprisals? Someone refresh me on the details if this rings a bell.)

Anyway, expect the only thing on the Web related to Olympic results of stories is the officially santioned site and NBC and the big media outlets who paid out their butts to cover the games. Everyone else is shut out. That's my accessibility mogul. (Gah--can we fire whoever came up with that expression?)

Re:Biggest "accessibility mogul"

[Bonker]

Mod Parent Up.

I was going to say something about this, but was beaten to the punch. As I understandd it, olympic athletes are verbotten by the IOC from keeping any kind of public journal of their experiences at the Olympics.

I wrote a rant mentioning this after the 2000 olympics in Sydney... http://www.furinkan.net/rant/olympics.html

I almost had that job, glad i left....

[CDWert]

I was in Nevada on an extended vacation when they were hiring for the lead on this project, I thought well if they pay over 120k ill live in SLC with my family for a year. I sent in a resume for kicks and grins, we discussed pay and they said with my experience that wouldnt be a problem and was promtly called in for an interview. It wasnt in the door 60 seconds when I realized they dont have a clue . It was a NIGHTMARE of politics and group confusion. I left and thought yeah a cold day in hell before Id do that, I told them I wasnt interested and was still called back several times. POLITICS reighn supreme in SLC when it has ANYTHING to do with the Olympics, Mormons were running the show, no ifs and or buts, the labor for everything was based on nepotism. My family has ins out there and told me what was actually happening behind the scence, I didnt belive it UNTIL I went to the interview.

A camel is a racehorse built by a commitee, On guy says, it needs big feet for traction, another sys, it needs long legs so it can run fast, another says it need big nostrils so it can breathe well while sprinting, You END up with a CAMEL, The olympic web site is no different....

Re:Does anyone really give a shit anymore?

[gowen]

The last time the games really mattered was in 1936, when Jesse Owens beat out Hitler's alleged Master Race competitors. It's been all downhill since then.

Whilst I agree with the thrust of your thesis, you can't track the decline that far back. The problems really started in 1976. The Montreal games were a financial disaster (it is rumoured that the city still hasn't fully settled the account). The 1980 games were marred by the (justified) US boycott due to the previous war in Afghanistan, but I enjoyed them (hey, a Brit won the 100m for God's sake, and Coe and Ovett larged it big style on the track.) But the Russians were prepared to take the economic hit as they thought a successful games w/o the Yanks would be a propaganda coup. The commercialisation really took off in LA in 1984. Desperate not to lose money, the city authorities did a great job finding sponsorship, in the absence of the communist block the US won everything not nailed down (except the women's 3000m, but thats another story) and everyone got rich. No surprises then, that thats been pretty much the format ever since.

Besides, for political impact, Tommie Smith's 1968 protest was the equal of Jesse, to my mind.

W3 Validator

[singularity]

After attempting to get W3.org's HTML validator to check the entire page, I finally just checked the main frame. Notice that I had to force HTML 4.01 Frameset, since the document does not include its own DOCTYPE.

Results can be found at this link. Needless to say, the site failed miserably, even with Frameset set.

iCab's built in HTML checker found 238 errors in the main frame alone, not to mention the dozens of errors in the surrounding frames.

Note that I am not suggesting that the writers are ever going to write strict HTML or XHTML (although they should for accessability), but that writing *such bad* HTML that some browsers choke on it is simply unacceptable *for anyone*, especially a web page like the Winter Olympics site.

Not IBM any more, now MSNCB, not surprised...

[Dave21212]

In prior years, the olympics.com sites were handled by IBM. They did a great job, considering the way that the web and the Internet were growing through those years. Here's a report they created discussing the their "User-Centered" design approach. For a cool example of a portion of the site targeted for the people at the events, check out the details of the regional weather site they did.

They broke several Internet world-records each year (most hits in a day, hits per minute, etc) they ran the technology using the Lotus Notes Domino servers on RS/6000. The story I heard was that IBM had faced all the tech challenges it wanted to, and that the inter-personal challenges were making their involvement in upcoming olympics less attractive (ie NBC being a pain). I remember at the time that I chuckled to myself "lets see who else thinks they can pull this one off!"

Now that Microsoft is involved (remember when they blocked non-IE browsers from their MSN site?) I'm not surprised at the results so far.

p.s. The fact that the site is not international, here in the year 2002, is an absolute shame! Hell, the 1998 site was at least in English French AND Japanese !

Re:Languages?

[bravehamster]

Their reasoning behind this is probably because the only two official languages of the Olympics are, you guessed it, English and French. That's what you get for letting a Frenchman create the modern Olympics. It really has nothing to do with "self-serving Americans". If you went to the Olympics, you'd see that all the signs are in English and French. Don't like it? Blame the IOC, not the people who made the website.

By using the official languages only, they avoid several problems. If they used only the "major" languages of Europe, complaints from other peoples of the world would rightfully come rolling in. Similarly, I doubt they have the budget or the resources to make a translation for everyone. By sticking to the official languages, they're avoiding any sign of favoritism or any Euro-centric or Amero-centric prejudices. Or at least they can plausibly deny such prejudices. ;)