[Gllug] OT: Online Natwest banking

[Simon Stewart]

Yeah, it's off topic. So shoot me. And it ties into the Argos thread.

Spent a part of the day today on the phone to Natwest, once again
picking them up their lack of support for alternative browsers. Since
I know that this list probably has some quite active "linux based
browser" users, can I please ask those of you who bank with Natwest to
give them a prod?

Below is the text of the message that I had to type into their
damnable form:

--- beginning of email

I use Mozilla, Opera, Konqueror, links, lynx and w3m on a day to day
basis to access the web, often from a machine running Linux, and
sometimes using a screen reader (as do many people with disabilities
such as blindness and dyslexia)

I note with dismay that the site is unusable in the text based web
browsers because of the reliance on Javascript. This is disappointing,
because this is how many of your partially sighted customers will use
the site. Worse, most of the time the javascript appears to be used to
open new windows, and consequently isn't required (the "onclick"
handler of the "a" tag should be used for this purpose, meaning that
the "href" attribute can be used by non-javascript enabled browsers)
This feedback form is an ideal example.

The online banking facilities are also only really available to those
customers using Windows and running IE. Apparently NS 4 will also
work, but since this has been superceeded by NS 6 (which has been
available for some time) this is a curious state of affairs. This is a
serious disappointment to me, because, as I mentioned previously, I
tend to use linux as my desktop OS, and MS have not ported IE to this
platform.

The omission of NS6 support is bad enough, but the inability of
someone running a text based browser to feed content to a screen
reader is discriminatory at the best of times, and possibly illegal (I
have included some links to the relevant legislation at the bottom of
this email)

The lack of access to alternative browsers is making me reconsider my
banking needs, and if Natwest meets these needs. Currently, I fear
that I will be closing my account.

Finally, is there a normal email address that I could use to send my
comments to? The form presented provides space for only a superficial
amount of text, and lacks facilities such as a spell checker. This is
not the case with a proper email client.

I look forward to hearing your response,

Regards,

Simon Stewart

Useful resources:

An overview of the Disability Discrimination Act, 1995
http://www.drc-gb.org/drc/InformationAndLegislation/Page321.asp

The Disability Discrimination Act, 1995. This is a link directly to
"part 3", dealing with "Discrimination in relation to goods,
facilities and services."
http://www.legislation.hmso.gov.uk/acts/acts1995/95050--c.htm#19

--- end of email

Cheers,

Simon

-- 
I bet the human brain is a kludge. -- Minsky

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