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

Text of both URL's

[TheFalken]

http://www.webreference.com/new/020117.html

http://www.brainstormsandraves.com/2002_01_13_ar ch ive.shtml#8746539

Complete with frames and fully dependent on JavaScript for display,
this site does at least feature ALT tags for images, unlike last
time when IBM had to add them later at great cost.

Beyond the fact that folks who turn off JavaScript are locked out,
there are some other glaring, yet common usability problems.

* Performance Problems

Frames are used throughout the site. These should be banished as
they slow down the display and clutter up our screens. The frames
are written with JavaScript document.writes, with no
alternative, ouch. View sourcing a few frames shows the site's
been Akamaized which is good, but it's overspecified with
font tags? This is the year 2002 people, anyone heard of CSS?
Switching to CSS here would save mucho bandwidth.

* Black Links

How do users tell these are links? How can we tell the difference
between black text and black links? They are not even underlined,
further exacerbating the problem. Users expect blue or colored
links, and that they at least be underlined. Some links spawn new
windows, and some even require JavaScript to work, an
accessibility no-no. At least the visited color is different.

* JavaScript Bugs

I know Shirley covered the dependence on JavaScript on her blog
but on my Mac running IE5, *every page* spawns a JavaScript
error. Unsupported objects, syntax errors, this does not engender
confidence in a site. So if you are a Mac user, you might turn
off JavaScript to get rid of the errors right? Guess what. Gotta
have JavaScript enabled to use the site. See my problem here? I
see this is a Microsoft ASP site, could be a sign....

"This site requires javascript enabled on your browser."

If you're going to require JavaScript at least test the site on
PC and Mac platforms with recent browsers. But, I digress.

* META/TITLE Tags

The site doesn't use META tags. Guess they think this is a one-
time thing and traffic won't be a problem.

Here are some sample titles:

Olympics
Frame Top
SLOC - Cover Front Page 3:11 PM ET Thursday, January 17, 2002

This is useful if I happen to not know the current date and time.

The site looks good, but I expect better for such a high profile
site. The main TITLE says just "Olympics." Um, which one? 1924
where Harold Abrahams won the 100 and Eric Liddell the 400? Can't
you just hear Vangelis in the background? A more descriptive title
tag wouldn't hurt here. Try it for yourself below, but be sure to
have JavaScript enabled and don't use a Mac.

http://www.saltlake2002.com/

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http://www.brainstormsandraves.com/2002_01_13_ar ch ive.shtml#8746539
Accessibility Lockout for Olympics 2002 Site -- Again?!
After the lawsuit, resulting decision, and huge scandal over the lack of alt tags for the Sydney 2000 Olympics site, I had to go see how the Salt Lake 2002 site fares for accessibility. With Opera in hand to easily turn off images, I checked it out. Whew. This time they use alt tags on the main page, and most of them have decent description text, with just a few having a pointless "image" for the alt tag text. Not bad.

Turning off JavaScript, though, doesn't fare so well. In fact, it makes the site totally inaccessible, as shown in the screenshot below. Uh-oh. "Javascript must be enabled to view this site" pops onto the screen, and there are no links and no alternative means of entering the site. Unbelievable.

They could have easily included the NOSCRIPT element with a hyperlink to access the site without JavaScript.

I must admit to being totally shocked that there's an outright accessibility block like this. Lots of people turn off JavaScript, don't have JavaScript capability, use screen readers and other alternative viewers. To totally prevent these users from using the site is not only poor form for creating a worldwide site to be accessed by anyone but especially nuts in view of their lawsuit for alt tags two years ago.

Unbelievably, though, the above is just the beginning of the story!

I clicked into the Spectator page. Down in the lower left of the Spectator page is this message: "Plug-ins needed for certain content: Flash, Adobe Acrobat Reader." Potential uh-oh again if accessible alternatives aren't provided.

Making note of that, I continued on, clicking the Games Programs link in the navigation. On that page are links to a wide range of programs, including the Paralympic Winter Games. Each of these links, however, are accessible ONLY with JavaScript popup windows (without including hyperlinks within the JavaScript, which is simple to do). As another check, I disabled JavaScript in Opera, then reloaded this page. Guess what?! I got the message again about not being able to access the page without JavaScript. Amazing that I can't even access the Paralympics information. Unbelievable.

On to the Venues page. The good news is that I could access the page without JavaScript turned on. The bad news is that some of the "Important Venue Spectator Information" is only accessible via downloadable PDF files or JavaScript popup windows, once again blocking or potentially blocking accessibility without JavaScript or without the special plug-ins for screen readers that convert the PDF files to readable text.

To top it off, the Paralympics Venue map is a PDF document that isn't accessible friendly.

Another factor is that the site is done in frames. Frames can have accessible alternatives with the NOFRAMES element; however, they didn't use them. When I turned off frames in Opera to try to view this new 2002 Olympics site, there was only a blank white screen with no alternative means to enter the site and no instructions. Nothing.

I suspect I could go from page to page with lots more, and it appears that I've only scratched the surface here of some major blunders with their site's accessibility.

I wonder how long it will take before the you-know-what hits the fan.

Final Thoughts
What bothers me the most is that the developers didn't make use of the Accessibility Guidelines. I have no problem with sites using frames as long as they also provide accessibility alternatives. And of course I have no problem with JavaScript, with Flash, with PDF files. Appropriate alternatives can be provided to allow anyone in the world to access this major worldwide event that represents most of the world, including the Paralympics for the disabled. This is certainly one site that demands the widest range of accessibility as possible.