Governor Mitt Romney’s campaign site has, like the others I’ve looked at, some strikes against it with regards to accessibility. His home page has an auto-starting audio clip of Governor Romney thanking people for visiting the site and asking for donations to the campaign. There are no stop, start, pause or volume controls. Luckily it’s not that long, but it is distracting, especially if 1) you have to use a screen reader to browse the page and 2) if you have streaming audio or mp3s already playing.
There appears to be a misuse of headings on the page. There are three h1 elements - which means there is no single important theme on the page. The h1 elements don’t appear till much farther down the page and when they do, an h2 element appears first. This puts the outline out of whack. More seriously, you get a little further down the page and there are three h2 headings that are worded the same: “More >>”
They are links, too, so that’s a double-strike. You have headings worded exactly the same, and you have links worded the same.
A few images do not have alt tags. Surprisingly, the lead image on the site, Romney’s “banner” image, has no alt tag. This is sadly more common than I like, or expect.
Romney’s site’s forms, used to search the site and to join his site constituency, aren’t labeled properly. This is a common accessibility error, but it’s very fixable.
I’m getting tired of seeing a lack of alt tags. As accessibility steps go, including them is the easiest thing to do. There are checkers and tools available for people to use. Is there anyone on these campaign web teams using them?
