Slashdot Mirror
Odeon Orders Takedown Of Copycat Site
Tuxedo Jack writes "The Register reports that Odeon Cinemas, a British theater chain, has ordered a takedown of a copycat version of its site that was made by a disability activist. The original didn't work outside of IE on Windows and was in violation of the Disability Discrimination Act; the activist-recoded one worked on everything. Odeon has flip-flopped on the issue, too; they liked it when it was first up, and now they don't."
Seems like they'd be better off using this energy to make sure their site works on all browsers instead of coming down on someone who is doing a legitimate service...
... a slashdotting will. :\
This first post must be taken down immediately.
Regards
Odeon
I appreciate Somerville's (apparently) noble motivations and Odeon's non-compatibility is certainly a problem, but how can you argue with their logic?
People are essentially misled into giving personal info and, since Somerville is using Odeon's marks, how could they think otherwise?
Somerville is well-intentioned but completely in the wrong here. Corporations must act this way to protect themselves and I believe they're well within their rights here.
Couldn't Somerville have found another way to provide the listings without the "cloning" approach? Maybe even a protest site that would drive Odeon to comply?
And, instead of looking mean-spirited to those (most people) who not understand corporate liabilities, etc., couldn't Odeon have just gotten the damn thing done right on their own?
Sheesh, what a lot of wasted angst on all sides.
In some ways, this is similar those situations where unbidden third parties submit ideas or scripts or spec ads to large companies and get sore because the company won't even read them. But the company is just protecting itself from future lawsuits when, even though they come up with an idea themselves, a bunch of knuckle-heads pipe up with "hey. I gave them that idea!"
"...all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness..." yada yada
It seems like the negative press could be more costly than just buying the fixed layout off of him, or even hiring him to replace their (incompetent) web design staff...
Why is this a big deal? I read the 2 emails from Odeon and the one sent to them, and I don't see why Odeon is being outragous in asking them to take down the site.
Sure, their site should work in other browsers, but that is not the issue.
The issue is that some guy is tricking people into submitting info to his site instead of the Odeon site like they think that they are. Maybe he collects the data before he sends it to Odeon, maybe he doesn't like he says. I don't know him, and thats not even the issue.
I can very well understand why a company does not want someone they don't know collecting their customers information in their name. What if they guy ends up getting caught selling all these names to spammers one day? Then Odeon would really look stupid for not taking action against the guy.
IANAL, but 'letting people browse a website easier' doesn't trump 'copyright law' where I live. He (Somerville) is using their (Odeon) IP without their permission (now).
So, why is this a bad thing? Yes their site may suck, but violating Copyright is violating Copyright no matter how you slice it.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Odeon might get less of a grilling for us if they had ever actually bothered to do something to make their site work correctly.
.. I can't think what they're smoking.
Apparently it doesn't even work correctly in MSIE most of the time, and I found the copycat site particularly useful in finding out times of films. I'd normally then book via phone.
A message to Odeon: Fix the site, and maybe then you might have some reason to complain. But so far, since the copycat site:
* Allows more people to look up film times.
* Makes it easier for people to do the above.
* Does not detract potential revenue away from Odeon itself.
Probably a bigwig who has no clue of the situation made this decision..
Let me save you the effort of expressing your angst! Just fill in the blanks!
I am ___________ over this article!
a. saddened
b. outraged
c. bleeding from my ass
___________ is once again treading on my rights, and I'm fed up with it!
a. Microsoft
b. SCO
c. The RIAA
d. The MPAA
e. George W. Bush
I am entitled to ___________
a. free software,
b. free music,
c. free movies,
d. other people's money,
and should not have to risk being ___________
a. thrown in jail!!
b. held responsible for my actions!!
c. called a terrorist, socialist or communist!!
In this FREE (as in beer, er I mean SPEECH) country, I should be able to take comfort in knowing that ___________
a. society will pay for my personal shortcomings.
b. industry exists to provide me with stuff regardless of whether or not I can't afford it.
c. the law doesn't apply to me.
d. the United States answers to an organization comprised 2/3 of dictatorships.
When will this tyranny end? We need to stand up and fight for a world where our children can ___________
a. treat their parents and teachers as equals.
b. learn that Christianity, and all who practice it are better off dead.
c. watch clown porn from the comfort of the elementary school library.
d. revel in the freedom of moral relativism.
I for one am going to do my part TODAY by ___________
a. writing an angry letter to my congressmen... yeah right!
b. doing another J.
c. living in my parents' basement in protest!
d. post to inconsequential blogs like Slashdot.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Dear God... What is wrong with creating a site with valid html? The web is slowly turning into a real cesspool. If a site is in Flash, I don't even bother.
Why couldn't they parse the info pages (via an HTML ripper or something), pull out the information they want, and post that on their own site? No cloned pages, but the data's the same. And of course, the new pages would work in all browsers.
The original didn't work outside of IE on Windows and was in violation of the Disability Discrimination Act
Well, I for one liked the original. I suffer from mental retardation you see, and as a result I only use and swear by Microsoft products. As a disabled person, I can testify that the original website worked perfectly.
The new page on the other hand, which was aimed at open-minded people who used other, non-Microsoft browsers, was constantly reminding me of my disability and as such was totally discriminatory. And not just to me, but to all the disabled IT guys at Odeon also! I am so glad it's not accessible anymore, so I can go back to my comforting illusions.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
That's the problem with these well-intentioned laws. When someone wants to flout them, the effort to correct the problem seems to be insurmountable. I'm sure there will be lawsuits and court orders and a whole bunch of people's productivity being sucked down a black hole (willingly or not), before this is said and done.
The problem stems from the fact that in our society (modern Western democracies anyway), we are so buried in an avalanche of regulations that there is no way you can even be aware of them all, and when one that is particularly useful... such as a law requiring handicapped access, enforcement becomes infeasible because so much effort is being wasted to meet the utter explosion of bureaucratic requirements.
We already work about half the year just to pay taxes, and when we can work for ourselves how big does the proportion of time we spend dealing with red tape have to be before people get fed up. We are being nickel-and-dimed into losing productivity. Meanwhile this Web site apparently ignores the law and it will probably be months or years before anything can be done about it because the people who could do something about it are too busy making sure that all government contractors are using 7/64" bevelled grommets instead of 3/32" bevelled grommets.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
The original site only allowed access to people using Internet Explorer and Windows and was in breach of the Disability Discrimination Act.
Despite predictions when his site first went up that the lawyers' letters would arrive immediately Odeon Cinema initially welcomed the site - as did many disabled people who could access the site for the first time.
But this all changed with the arrival of an email from Luke Vetere, marketing director at Odeon
Brilliant marketing. Piss off and lock out a demographic. And there's nothing better to improve a company's image than screwing over disabled people and breaking the law. Odeon is really getting its money's worth hiring this moron.
Flash is completely inaccessible to the visually disabled (who do go to movies, believe it or not). That is not a good solution.
Complexity is Easy. Simplicity is Hard.
Ahem, I think you're missinterpreting the poster, it is most surely a joke since it's been a long fight on the side of dissabled (specially blind) people to make sites created wholly in flash to provide other formats that are readable by screen readers (be they braile or text to speech) which flash, last time I checked, was not.
When will /. be getting a well needed HTML upgrade to XHTML 1.0 or 1.1? And have it fully validate?! I mean for crying out loud someone on alistapart.com did an article and rewrote slashdot as a completely standard website.. see the article and read more about it here
Look at the savings in bandwidth he calculated out.
"Most Slashdot visitors would have the CSS file cached, so we could ballpark the daily savings at ~10 GB bandwidth. A high volume of bandwidth from an ISP could be anywhere from $1 - $5 cost per GB of transfer, but let's calculate it at $1 per GB for an entire year. For this example, the total savings for Slashdot would be: $3650! All of that for just a couple of KB."
stupid people will be stupid. doing illegal things to try to change that situation is stupid. and illegal. thus you will make a futile (stupid) effort to make things better and get your ass sued by the people who are smarter than you but, nonetheless, stupid.
-ninjaneer
Someone should make a movie about this.
to control their copyright/trademark objects.
It is also the right of ALL disable people (or is that 'differently-abled' - whatever is not offensive) to sue Odeon for their violation.
Sadly, it would be best if Odeon would just pay for the updated content that fixes their works, reference the creator, and everyone join in for a hootenanny!!!!
hello
I'm writing this email, because I wanted to check odeon's cinema program. And I find out that I cannot access the website! It is obviously broken, the only thing I can see is a picture http://www.odeon.co.uk/Odeon/img/home.jpg and nothing more.
I hope that you will fix the site as fast as possible. Remember that by such a way you lose big number of customers.
PS: I really would like to send to you this complaint (so you can be aware of this problem), but I can't. I cannot find your email address, because the site is not working.
#
#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
#
He should take the site down in compliance with their notice. Then he should report their site as a violation of that disability act, and offer to sell his compliant site layout to them at a "discount". That way they can pay out a small sum, have their rights, and a compliant site.
Or they can just be bastards about the whole thing. IE on Windows only? Why the hell? Ohhh... I see... their shitty DHTML menus! OK. So, an experienced person can duplicate that in Flash in probably 10 minutes. Or, somebody experienced in cross-browser DHTML can make it work with Mozilla or Opera, or even the Mac IE. Whatever.
Laziness at it's best. Why fix the site when we can pay lawyers more then it would cost fix it?
There are only 10 kinds of people in this world... those who understand binary and those who don't
How Odeous!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
See the video of this story on
NBC News.
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
Ok, so whats your point? That is another non-issue. Yes, they are braking the law. I hope that the UK govenment cracks down on them. Anyways... back to the topic of discussion... This guy with the copycat website is not some kind of vigilante of the internet. His job is not to take the law into his own hands, especially if it involves stepping on some company's rights and some people's rights (the people being those who submit data unknowingly to his site). I bet the guy is very well intentioned, but he needs to get real. If he is worried about this that much, he should find a legitimite solution to the problem.
I am outraged that you:
A) think I am so predictable that 4 measly options will cover 99.999% of my reactions
B) glossed over other important issues
C) didn't fill in the blanks for me
D) there is no D...
Yep, B it is.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Every time someone orders a site down, it gets posted on Slashdot.
Guess what - the sites go down.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
...since it's totally factually inaccurate.
The UK has the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, which is *far* beefier than US legislation, and clearly does cover both web sites and private sector companies.
It hasn't, however, been enforced in court yet. Perhaps the best revenge would be to correct that latter omission.
The only correct answer is to get a court order for the original site be taken down until it upholds the disabilities law!
Maybe the blind can't see the movie, but at least they can buy tickets! Thank you Accessible Od*on!
Lots of people are spouting lots of FUD here. Of course the site should be assessable. But the Disabilities Act does not require anyone except government agencies and a few other select public service entities to have assessable web sites.
And by the way, Slashdot and OSDN does not comply with the act either, so if there is going to be some mud slinging, by all means be fair about it!
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
> I appreciate Somerville's (apparently) noble motivations and Odeon's non-compatibility is certainly a problem, but how can you argue with their logic?
No. I can't. That's why they own trademarks, so they can control content. Now if Odeon was smart, they would simply fire off an RSS feed and let the guy fucking well spider it. Am I right or what?
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
A developer asked me today "How many blind people access our site?".
I answered "God forbid, if the wrong thing happened to you today, tomorrow we could have one more."
True quote.
I test web accessibility, BTW.
IANAL, (especially in England) but I think he may have a defence based on equitable estoppel. It certainly applies in Canada and the US - not sure about England. But if they had previously supported him and suddenly did a 180, then he has recourse to fight it, and recoup his legal costs.
p pe l.htm
http://www.legal-definitions.com/equitable-esto
My rights don't need management.
Not because of some moral stand, but through my laziness.
I live within 15 minutes drive of 3 large cinema chains, including an Odeon, and browse exclusively with Firefox - my link to IE is hidden in the depths of the Start menu. Before, I would browse the copycat site and the other two's official sites, and if there was a film I wanted to see at the Odeon at a convenient time, I would fire up IE and book online on the official Odeon site. I doubt I'll open IE just to check listing times.
That Odeon site is pretty Odious...even beyond the retardation of requiring www. being prepended to the domain in the URL, it opens up to what looks like a giant banner ad...and NO OTHER CONTENT. Then when you read the instructions "Simply click this page to enter." (buried in some boilerplate looking text) you try clicking on the page. No dice, the text lied. So you click on the "ODEON" logo. Nope, that's not clickable either. You HAVE to click on the "FREE* Activision PC Game Sampler" to get anywhere.
And that takes you to what looks like a circa-1997 splash page w/ a fuzzed out logo. (No further info on the spiderman offer) But that's the site...all the content is hidden in a series of 5 dropdown menus.
And as if that's not bad enough, some of the menu items that "do something" besides open up a submenu have confusing *right* facing triangles, very similar at a glance to the left facing submenu indicators. But on mouse-over, they all get a lit up arrow pointing one way or the other.
What a suck, suck, suck site, from every angle imaginable: usability, information flow, accessibility, content, graphics design...UGH! At the risk of hammering on my lame pun, they really DO put the Odeon back into Odious.
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
You know, I'm honestly fairly torn about this. On the one hand, accessability is important. On that same hand, what this person did was careful, thoughtful, did not diminish Odeon's business, did not consume any of Odeon's traffic or name recognition. He didn't sully the cinema's name; arguably, he repaired one of their problems, and moreover did something they were required to have done and which they failed to do.
On the other hand, I would be furious if someone chose to replicate my website, for any reason, be it good or bad. Now, I know, corporations usually have their heads buried deep in the sand over handling issues like accessability which are seen as obscure and unimportant, much less accepting free help from the outside world, or "getting right on it" when someone notifies them of a problem. Moreover, it wouldn't at all surprise me that this guy actually needed an accessable version of the site; most people don't do things like this unless it matters to them personally, and a movie chain isn't the biggest PR getter if it's a question of getting the issue into the papers. Still, really, who does this guy think he is, choosing to take the corporation's name into his hands and do what he will with it, even if he's doing the right thing, doing a very good job of it, and from many perspectives should be being thanked right now?
There was, once, a corporate tendency to Do The Right Thing. Back in the day, when a corporate problem or vulnerability was exposed, ignored, and fixed by an outsider, generally the corporation would turn around, fix it properly, and thank the watchdog, then find out the manager which had ignored the watchdog's pleas and put their job in jeopardy, and finally admonish the watchdog to speak with this other manager instead, who will listen instead of being a wall.
Will Odeon do this? Well, that remains to be seen. Someone somewhere probably believes that this was a huge risk and brand dilution, probably hasn't even looked at the site and is ignoring that a good job was done of a task which needed to happen. Corporations no longer attempt to behave civilly; now they defend every red cent like it's the last one that would ever be made, and if there's a hair of a chance that maybe somehow this could have been bad if he had been swearing, then we'd better god damned well make an example out of the guy trying to do the right thing, so that nobody else tries to do the right thing.
It would be appropriate for slashdotters in Britain, the US or Canada to call or write to Cineplex (depending on your nation, you may have to look for Lowe's Cineplex or Sony Theaters; they're all the same company.) It is spectactuarly difficult to track down a way to reach them, but the investor relations tab (as usual) has information that nobody else has.
Cineplex executives and contact information.
If you feel strongly about web accessability or about corporations not lashing out for people trying to do the Right Thing for them by proxy, please consider placing a five minute phone call in this man's support.
StoneCypher is Full of BS
If the site violates disability laws, then perhaps the disability activist should muster the troops and file suit against the cinema chain. I know some of you will flame this post citing it as a frivolous lawsuit, but you also need to take into account how many lawsuits have been filed in the US because someone didn't have adequate handicapped parking or a wheel chair accessible ramp, or a handicapped stall in teh restroom. I ask you if those lawsuits were frivolous. The case would never have to go to court, they could agree to drop the case should the cinema chain agree to alter it's site so that it were viewable through other browsers.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
Dear Sir/Madam,
I visited odeon.co.uk with Mozilla Firefox (a popular web browser) this week to book tickets for myself and 7 others to see Spider Man 2. Your site does not seem to work at all and I was thus forced to book tickets with one of your competitors (UGC Cinemas) who have the foresight to make their site work with other browsers and operating systems.
I am a web developer myself and know first hand that it is not hard to produce 100% cross browser sites and respectfully suggest that if your web developers cannot do the same you should terminate their employment, they are patently unable to fulfil their job requirements.
Your website also contravenes the Disability Discrimination Act (1995) which could leave your company open to possible civil action, not to mention bad publicity. I assume you would prefer to avoid this.
Until this problem is resolved I will not be showing my patronage to Odeon cinemas and will recommend that my friends and acquaintances do the same.
If I do not receive a satisfactory answer to this email I will also be passing a complaint to the relevant authorities regarding the DDA (Disability Discrimination Act) infractions.
Yours Sincerely,
Phil John.
Probably won't do any good but hey, if they want to lose customers fark em, UGC cinemas are normally better (bigger, beefier sound, comfier seats) anyway.I am NaN
That's not entirely true: Creating Accessible Flash It takes some extra work to make Flash accessible, and not all of Flash can be made accessible, but it's still possible to make a Section 508 compatible web site using Flash.
Slashdot is a US based site and therefore doesn't have to comply with the UK's accessability laws. That being said, you don't seem to understand that 'looks like sh_t' and 'does not work' are two different things. The Odeon site not only doesn't work in other browsers because it is all written in non-portable Javascript, it doesn't work with screen readers for the blind at all because it is all written in Javascript that the screenreaders can't parse anything useful out of. That is what this guy is complaining about. I don't think he'd be complaining if it just looked like crap in other browsers but screen readers for blind users could read the content. It isn't against the law to have an ugly website, but it is against the law apparently in the UK to have a site that can't be used by blind people. It just so happens that if they make the site so it works with screen readers, it probably will also work just fine in browsers other than IE.
Kill two birds with one stone and hire the guy to fix the website. I guarantee that he's cheaper than the lawyers. It'd also make great publicity.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Odeon would have no problem tweaking their site to save themselves the bad press
You are demonstrably incorrect. They did NOT tweak their site to save themselves bad press. I'm used to people not reading the article, but have you read ANYTHING in this thread?
Seems unfair for the parent to be modded Offtopic.
Plus he/she brings up a good point: For all the nitpicking that we all do about non-compliant websites, it seems reasonable that the premier website for nerdly matters should set the example and lead the way.
Just in case someone makes an assumption from this post, you could never book tickets, therefore never submit credit card details, on my site.
Considering the amount of bitching that goes on here, I'd say that Slashdot is mostly-complaint, but will likely never make it to fully-complaint outside of SCO/MPAA/RIAA/Microsoft articles.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
You are kind and sensitive and enjoy talking to strangers. You bear a healthy disregard to political issues and are not offended by most things you see in the news.
While your friends view you as somthing of a pushover, they also respect your intelligence.
Your lucky number is 7
Your sun sign is Leo
Your lucky day was 2 years, 3 months ago
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Things like this must make Oscar Deutche spin in his grave.... His business was to entertain the whole nation, not just those with no disabilities.
Lets remember what ODEON stands for...
Oscar
Deutche
Entertains
Our
Nation
(Of course, I may have spelt his name wrong but this is SlashDot, who cares!)
-- The universe began. Life started on a billion worlds...
-- Except on one where stupidity was there first.
I've put in Flash in sites and dramatically increased the sales made by those sites- from one or two contacts a year to a few contatcs a week.
If it's made with usability in mind, Flash can be a good way to build value and rapport, which is important to many people on the net.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
visually disabled (who do go to movies, believe it or not)
Oh, I believe it. In fact, I've got the sneaking suspicious that many modern films are DIRECTED by the visually disabled.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
I don't agree with heavy-handed responses to individuals who are doing independent work for the good of everyone and not for money... BUT.... the fact remains that it is their copyright and intellectual property. I'm no fan of big corporations, but this particular issue seems pretty clear-cut to me.
<info@odeonuk.com>
Dear Sir or Madem:
I attempted to visit the Odeon website at http://www.odeon.co.uk/ today. Unfortunately, I was not able to access your site. The problem that I experience is that I see a blank page with only the word Odeon visible. Upon consulting with other web users, I have found that you have repeatedly asked users to use Microsoft Internet Explorer to view your website. This represents a major problem for many of us.
Some of us use operating systems that do not support Internet Explorer. Most users of non-Windows operating systems do not have access to a modern copy of Internet Explorer. Some of us rely on browsers other than Internet Explorer for web browsing due to accessibility features not present in Internet Explorer. Finally, using other web browsers is often more convenient; to inconvenience such a large user base with a request to change browsers is unlikely to be effective. In addition, the requests to close the accessible portal site Accessible ODEON previously at http://www.dracos.co.uk/odeon/ only increases the probability of overlooking your site completely.
Due to the volume of previous E-mails requesting some level of accessibility from the ODEON website and support of alternative browsers, I believe you are already aware of the problem. However, I am writing as merely one more customer who is deeply concerned with this problem, and is unable to accept the current quality of your website. I trust I will be able to use your website sometime soon.
Thank you in advance for your kind consideration and swift action.
Sincerely,
Copy Andpaste
...compared to the living hell of their telephone system. Easily the worst ever voice-call management site I have ever encountered.
On the rare occasions where I am forced to use an Odeon these days, I tend to book my tickets by physically visting the cinema, talking to the nice students behind the counter (who have access to a decent and feature-filled UI, and can thus answer questions like "How busy is the 4:30 showing of Spiderman 2?"), and departing with my tickets physically in my hand.
I will never again book an Odeon ticket over the net, because their system is broken. I will never again book Odeon tickets over their telephone system, because their system is broken.
It pains me to say this, because ODEON is a big name in the history of British cinema & Art Deco architecture.
these guys had a go at it here.
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
Here's mine:
Dear Sir/Madam,
I would like to complain about the current state of your web site which is, I am afraid to say, poorly designed and incompatible with many different web browsers.
I am a user of Mozilla-Firefox, a popular open-source, standards compliant and secure web browser. Your web site does not render correctly when viewed with Firefox. Your web site is inaccessible through Firefox. Your web site renders poorly in another standard compliant web browser; Opera.
The only browser in which your web site renders well enough to be used is Internet Explorer. Even then, the design of the site is poor. The home page presents the visitor with an intrusive advert which, at the time of writing, is offering a "free Activision PC game sampler."
The text below this advert makes it seem as though the site is accessed by "clicking on the page." This is not true. One has to click on the advert in order to actually enter the main site and get down to the business of doing what the user wanted to do which is to view film listings and, potentially, book a seat.
I would at this point ask you to note that Internet Explorer is a poor choice of browser. It is lacking in features and it is insecure. Recently, CERT and the United States Department of Homeland Security recommended that computer users stop using Internet Explorer.
I was appalled to learn that you have attacked one Mr Matthew Somerville over his efforts to create a site that is easy to use and efficient. While I appreciate that you have a right to protect the use of your trademarks and copyrights, I feel that you could have better spent your time and resources on redesigning your site.
I must advise you that until such time as you see to hiring competent Web Designers that are capable of producing a modern and browser compatible web site, I am unable to continue to frequent Odeon cinemas. I will ensure that my colleagues and friends take the same action. There are simply too many alternatives (Vue and Showcase to name but two) for a cinema company to be able to act with such arrogance and disregard for their customer base.
Yours faithfully,
Nigel Smith.
The US Law is Section 508 of The Rehabilitation Act of 1973 as amended by The Workforce Investment Act of 1998.
Whilst that law only applies to government entities, court rulings indicate that Intranets have to comply with ADA. One pissed off resident of the Ninth Judicial District of the US, and a lawyer is all it takes to flip Section 508 into the ADA.
Why not design an accessible website? It isn't much more difficult to do, and the people that are the most thankful are the normal, non-disabled population.
Amber
Wind Beneath Thy Wings
Does having a site only working in IE make it inaccessible to handicapped? Is this saying that Mozilla users are handicapped? IE, and windows, have some good integrated accessibility features, magnifyers and text-to-speech and all that.
I think the fact that the website only worked in IE is independent of the accusation that it violates some discrimination law. They're two separate things which just happened to be mentioned together. You're reading too much into it.
For example, the way most people described the site, it sounds like there's no text to turn into speech, just lots of flash animations and menus. That's a discrimination law issue. Flash graphics should work in other browsers, so that's probably not related to the site not working in IE. More likely the IE thing is related to some weird scripting issue.
Suggestion.
Go volunteer your time at a local society for the blind.
You just might be surprised at the number of movies they do go to. And the tv shows they watch. I guess you didn't know that some TV shows use a second channel for the visually impaired
It was really fun when the cable repair people came, and couldn't fix the cable, because there was no tv --- we use the VCR to watch tv, and movies.
Amber
Wind Beneath Thy Wings