RAMsey

22 Jun, 2007

Inaccessible campaign websites – Barack Obama

Posted by: pat In: Accessibility

This is the second campaign website I’m looking at to see how accessible it is. Barack Obama’s site, I’ll say, seems to be better than Senator Clinton’s. I think they’ve done a better job of providing information without relying on images. There’s some room for improvement, though, as a quick check shows a few alt tags missing. The site also uses 3 tables for layout; we should be past that in 2007.

There are links that open new windows and they are not identified as doing such. Please, can we stop doing this? At least without some notification that if I activate that link, I’m going to not be in the same window as I was before? Without that, I don’t have the same browsing history, I can’t simply “go back” to where I was before, it’s just not kosher. Blindfold yourself and navigate this page, activating links at random.

This is a cursory look at accessibility pitfalls on this page. There’s some more I’m not touching on. As far as the two sites I’ve looked at so far, the Obama campaign site is a leap above the Clinton site, simply because the Clinton site makes no attempt at providing textual alternative content for so much of the page’s content.

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Flickr PhotoStream

    Cospace at Scooter'sDr. Clay Spinuzzi interviewing the founders of CospaceThe First Coworking CongressblueBeanieSMall

About RAMsey

Welcome to the web site for Pat Ramsey, an accessibility consultant and web designer based in Austin, Texas. A device-independent Web is my dream and I believe we can achieve that with style - an accessible Web doesn't have to be a poorly designed Web.

Pat's Flickr Stream

  • Cospace at Scooter's
  • Dr. Clay Spinuzzi interviewing the founders of Cospace
  • The First Coworking Congress
  • blueBeanieSMall
  • 1958 BMW Isetta Microcar on the road
  • 1958 BMW Isetta
  • 1957 Chevrolet
  • 1936 Plymouth Interior
  • 1973 Toyota Corolla