[Gllug] Barbican website - accessibility issues

[CEvers at barbican.org.uk]

Dear Greater London Linux Users Group

Some of you contacted me recently about the Barbican Centre website and
commented on problems related to its accessibility, both for people with
disabilities and users of non-Microsoft/Netscape browsers.  I promised to
respond via your group email address as the issues are clearly of concern to
all of you - and to me too.

To take disabled access first, I guess we would all agree that the key group
here is people with visual impairments. Visual impairment is not an all or
nothing condition, and not all visually-impaired people want to use
text-only browsers and/or text-to-speech converters, simply because they
enjoy using sites that have interesting visual content.  
However, I think you are absolutely right that we should be aiming to meet
the needs of all our audiences (within reason), and it is something that has
been discussed inside the organization.  I would like to assure you all that
this is something we want to work towards.  One question the Barbican has to
come to a view on, given its inevitably limited resources, is, where should
we start?  I'll come back to this point shortly.

On the second point of browser compatibility, as I mentioned in my original
email, at the time the site was designed, Opera and the others were off the
radar.  And much as I agree with the point made by Gary Heaton and Will
Jessop that making the site compliant with W3C standards will make the site
compatible with future developments in the browser industry, I do believe
that an arts site has a duty to be visually interesting/aesthetically
pleasing - would this be possible if we followed W3C standards to the
letter?  I'm not convinced.  However, I agree that the environment has
changed now - the open source community has made a real impact and browsers
like Opera are becoming more widespread.  Again, the Barbican needs to take
this into account.  Again, the question I come back to is, where should we
start?

I also wanted to quickly deal with the comment from Linuxlover that I am
"bowing to corporate giants such as Microsoft".  I think that Microsoft have
been a force for good and for bad in the development of IT over the last 20
years.  On the negative side are the issues we all know about from the
anti-trust case in the US.  On the positive side I would argue that their
products have made IT affordable to many more individuals and organizations
than would have been possible otherwise - I suspect you disagree with me on
this!

So getting down to details, what concrete steps should the Barbican be
taking to evolve its website in the broad direction you and I agree we
should be taking?  I would like to invite 3 or 4 of you down to the Barbican
for a chat about this (tea and biscuits on me) - how about Gary, Will and
Linuxlover - I promise not to wear a 'Gates is God' t-shirt.  If you have
members who act as representatives for this kind of exercise, even better -
but please, no businesses.  (Naturally, you are all welcome to email me back
as well.)  So, over to you.

Best wishes, Chris Evers



Chris Evers
Head of IT, Barbican Centre
e: cevers at barbican.org.uk
t:  020 7382 7111
f:  020 7382 7254
www.barbican.org.uk



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