This is a prime example of stupid design getting in the way of accessibility. How is a blind person supposed to access this site? A website reader would have massive problems reading this site. Seems crazy to have the text like that all over the site.
Hey everyone. I’m the CEO of Classy Llama Studios, the company that designed this site with the beautiful illustrations from Elsie Flannigan.
@Matt Thanks for the suggestion. We’ll consider it.
@Richard… Accessibility wasn’t a primary concern for this particular development considering the demand for art items is very low in the visually impaired demographic.
“@Richard… Accessibility wasn’t a primary concern for this particular development considering the demand for art items is very low in the visually impaired demographic.”
In the UK you can get sued for not being accessible to everyone. Is this not the same in the US?
I would strongly recommend following W3C standards with regards to accessibility.
“Getting sued”, whether in the UK or in the US is extremely case-to-case. If you are providing a service that is initially intended to cater (as well) to a visually impaired demographic, such as Target stores in the US, having a website that is accessible would be a reasonable requirement.
However, if every site with bad accessibility were to be legally liable, then you would have to sue a good amount of professional photographers, illustrators, and promotional microsites from companies such as Nokia, Coca-Cola, Virgin, etc. the list goes on.
In fact, we can take it further: what about car companies that don’t make cars which are accessible to paraplegics (those are done by third party companies), or fairground rides such as standing roller coasters. In fact, let’s include practically the entire video game industry – they should be sued as well, since 99% of the products aren’t accessible to the visually impaired.
Criticizing an illustrator’s site for using illustrations in order to help make sales (thus affecting accessibility) makes about as much sense as criticizing Apple for providing an iPhone without the option to have braille.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying they did a great job with accessibility (if you are going to use an image for an introductory paragraph, then use a sprite technique to hide the actual text – which clearly isn’t there at all), I’m just not particularly fond of this ridiculous accessibility witch hunt that’s been cropping up.
I don’t think it is a ‘witch hunt’, I just think that putting the text like that on the front page, as an image, is neglecting an audience that may want to access the site. There is no problem with the illustrations at all, but why does the text need to be like that?
I think your points are valid and sometimes it can be a bit over the top in terms of accessibility, it just frustrates me when I see massive images of text when there is very little need for it.
If I was partially sighted or needed to use a site reader, I would want to access as much as I could without feeling left out.
I made a comment earlier about accessibility, but I failed to mention that I think the overall design is really lovely and really illustrates the unique personality of the business.
I do think, if not for accessibility at least for SEO, that text replacement would be a good idea. A gradual implementation would be perfectly acceptable.
I’m wary of attacking other designers for accessibility because it’s still such a subjective component of the user experience. Accessibility guidelines, especially here in the U.S., have varying interpretations, and it’s up to the developers/designers to determine what’s the best user experience for their target audience.
Really beautiful design, but shame it just does not carry through any of the same quality into the coding, making the accessiblilty of the pages very poor.
Because of the noise you all are making, , I had one of our developers review the code for accessibility, and we feel that the current coding of the site is actually relatively accessible.
We are following all W3C standards for this site. If you find anything that is not within those standards, we would love to know specifically what the issue is.
I had no idea accessibility could be such a hot discussion item, but thank you all for bringing it to our attention.
@Matt We have text replacement for all images containing text. If you noticed any images that lacked text replacement, please let us know.
@Ben If you could be more specific, I’d appreciate it. I appreciate and invite feedback, especially if it’s specific enough to improve something.
First off; the site looks great and functions smoothly and simply. very good job.
@Kurt The menu lacks text replacement, and although I agree the blind may not take in too much visual art the site does sell music and plenty of gift items.
@All: Thanks for your critique of the accessibility of the site. I just saw these comments for the first time. I’m one of the developers that built the RVA site, so it’s of special importance to me that the code is top-quality. As several of you pointed out, the intro paragraph image was missing an alt tag. That has now been resolved.
@Tristan: Can you be more specific regarding the menu’s missing replacement text? The menus on the site are unordered lists with the link text inside of anchor tags. Is there something I’m missing?
18 Comments
a nice site…simple…art e passion for their work.
This has been on web creme for like a week ><
This is a prime example of stupid design getting in the way of accessibility. How is a blind person supposed to access this site? A website reader would have massive problems reading this site. Seems crazy to have the text like that all over the site.
@Richard: So if you wear black sun glasses, that makes you blind? I guess I’m blind then…
It’s actually fairly accessible. The accessibility component of the design could be improved by providing better image/text replacement.
У Вас есть другие сайты?
Hey everyone. I’m the CEO of Classy Llama Studios, the company that designed this site with the beautiful illustrations from Elsie Flannigan.
@Matt Thanks for the suggestion. We’ll consider it.
@Richard… Accessibility wasn’t a primary concern for this particular development considering the demand for art items is very low in the visually impaired demographic.
“@Richard… Accessibility wasn’t a primary concern for this particular development considering the demand for art items is very low in the visually impaired demographic.”
In the UK you can get sued for not being accessible to everyone. Is this not the same in the US?
I would strongly recommend following W3C standards with regards to accessibility.
Marky B:
“Getting sued”, whether in the UK or in the US is extremely case-to-case. If you are providing a service that is initially intended to cater (as well) to a visually impaired demographic, such as Target stores in the US, having a website that is accessible would be a reasonable requirement.
However, if every site with bad accessibility were to be legally liable, then you would have to sue a good amount of professional photographers, illustrators, and promotional microsites from companies such as Nokia, Coca-Cola, Virgin, etc. the list goes on.
In fact, we can take it further: what about car companies that don’t make cars which are accessible to paraplegics (those are done by third party companies), or fairground rides such as standing roller coasters. In fact, let’s include practically the entire video game industry – they should be sued as well, since 99% of the products aren’t accessible to the visually impaired.
Criticizing an illustrator’s site for using illustrations in order to help make sales (thus affecting accessibility) makes about as much sense as criticizing Apple for providing an iPhone without the option to have braille.
Grade A stuff. I’m unqestuinoably in your debt.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying they did a great job with accessibility (if you are going to use an image for an introductory paragraph, then use a sprite technique to hide the actual text – which clearly isn’t there at all), I’m just not particularly fond of this ridiculous accessibility witch hunt that’s been cropping up.
I don’t think it is a ‘witch hunt’, I just think that putting the text like that on the front page, as an image, is neglecting an audience that may want to access the site. There is no problem with the illustrations at all, but why does the text need to be like that?
I think your points are valid and sometimes it can be a bit over the top in terms of accessibility, it just frustrates me when I see massive images of text when there is very little need for it.
If I was partially sighted or needed to use a site reader, I would want to access as much as I could without feeling left out.
I made a comment earlier about accessibility, but I failed to mention that I think the overall design is really lovely and really illustrates the unique personality of the business.
I do think, if not for accessibility at least for SEO, that text replacement would be a good idea. A gradual implementation would be perfectly acceptable.
I’m wary of attacking other designers for accessibility because it’s still such a subjective component of the user experience. Accessibility guidelines, especially here in the U.S., have varying interpretations, and it’s up to the developers/designers to determine what’s the best user experience for their target audience.
Really beautiful design, but shame it just does not carry through any of the same quality into the coding, making the accessiblilty of the pages very poor.
Because of the noise you all are making,
, I had one of our developers review the code for accessibility, and we feel that the current coding of the site is actually relatively accessible.
We are following all W3C standards for this site. If you find anything that is not within those standards, we would love to know specifically what the issue is.
I had no idea accessibility could be such a hot discussion item, but thank you all for bringing it to our attention.
@Matt We have text replacement for all images containing text. If you noticed any images that lacked text replacement, please let us know.
@Ben If you could be more specific, I’d appreciate it. I appreciate and invite feedback, especially if it’s specific enough to improve something.
E-mail me directly if you like: kurt@classyllama.com
Thanks!
First off; the site looks great and functions smoothly and simply. very good job.
@Kurt The menu lacks text replacement, and although I agree the blind may not take in too much visual art the site does sell music and plenty of gift items.
One more time; very good job.
@All: Thanks for your critique of the accessibility of the site. I just saw these comments for the first time. I’m one of the developers that built the RVA site, so it’s of special importance to me that the code is top-quality. As several of you pointed out, the intro paragraph image was missing an alt tag. That has now been resolved.
@Tristan: Can you be more specific regarding the menu’s missing replacement text? The menus on the site are unordered lists with the link text inside of anchor tags. Is there something I’m missing?
Nice site..even I think this background is really strange! Good work.