[Gllug] Barbican website - accessibility issues

[Rev Simon Rumble]

Glad to hear back from you Chris, and glad to hear you're taking this
seriously.

On Tue 12 Nov, CEvers at barbican.org.uk bloviated thus:

> 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.

I think perhaps the best starting point is to work from a
standards-compliance point of view first and foremost and then add the
pretty bells and whistles later.  That really is the best approach:
function over form.

When I design a web site, I start with a "white site" which contains
no graphics and very minimal formatting.  This allows you to get an
idea of the functional flow of the site: linking from one place to
another, trying to perform an action.

The great thing about white sites is that you can get people to test
the functionality without them getting bogged down in graphical design
issues.  It's going to look butt-ugly, so you're automatically forcing
reviewers to look at it from a conceptual point of view.  You'll find
this heads off the "can I have it in a lighter shade of puce"
questions and gets them focussed on the important things.

The white site then becomes the bedrock of your site.  Everything gets
built around that.  Because it's all text, it's automatically usable
by standards-compliant browsers and visually impaired people.

> I do believe that an arts site has a duty to be visually
> interesting/aesthetically pleasing

Absolutely!  An arts site should be a reflection of the art contained
within, and some of the Barbican work is excellent from this
perspective.

> would this be possible if we followed W3C standards to the
> letter?

Absolutely!  The whole point of the way the standards are written is
to have graceful degradation.  If your browser supports the lot, it
looks great.  If not, it's still usable.

You'll need to get your designers out of their old habits of
formatting every element.

Finally, your site has some pretty major functional and data problems
too.  I tried to book online for Gallileo Gallilei last week and the
site was pretty braindead.  Click on "book" and it doesn't take you
straight to that event, you have to search for it.  Then the drop-down
list isn't even in alphabetical order!  Some of the items in the list
are all caps, some mixed case.  Some items have the "series" in front
of the name, some don't.  Impossible!

-- 
Rev Simon Rumble <simon at rumble.net>
www.rumble.net
Send email with subject "send key pub" for public key.

 "The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit."
- Somerset Maugham
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