You are probably right that I was a little harsh, but I've become increasingly frustrated by the lauding of web sites that, while having a pretty, shiny surface, don't even reach first base in terms of the quality and accessibility of their construction. It's particularly irritating because with HTML huge amounts of accessibility are built-in if you just do things right in the first place. Accessibility is not an additional plug-in, it's not an additional cost -- it comes free if designers/coders just know what they are doing and follow the specifications (which is what you would expect a professional in any other sphere to do). It can be hard to make physical things like buildings and exhibitions accessible, but we expect it to be done. It's easy with web sites, and we should expect no less.
Of course once you have, through ignorance or incompetence, designed accessibility _out_, there is a cost in correcting the mistake. But no-one could expect the people who commissioned the site to know all these things - that's why they employ professionals to do it - but they are the ones who will bear the consequences of disgruntled visitors (whom you will likely never hear from, they will just go elsewhere) and potential law suits.
Note that, for example, in a study carried out for Microsoft in 2003, approximately one in four of working age adults have a visual difficulty or impairment. You can download the report here:
<http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/1/f/01f506eb-2d1e-42a6-bc7b-1f33d25fd40f/ResearchReport.doc>.
If I seem a little (or more than a little) grumpy, it's because I am fed up with seeing the same simple basic mistakes made over and over again in museum web sites, by people who, if they have any pretensions to professionalism, ought to know better.
Best wishes
Pete
--
Peter M Gray
Museums Officer
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