Amazon.com to go accessible?
Cross-posted to the WaSP site, but this news was so shocking I had to check that it’s not April Fools Day yet:
Amazon.com, the leading online retailer, and the National Federation of the Blind have entered into a cooperation agreement. Amazon.com will make its Web site and e-commerce platform fully accessible to the blind in collaboration with the Access Technology staff of the NFB. Full release
Now, this is almost certainly because the NFB are suing Target.com (which is “powered by Amazon”), but is nevertheless welcome news. I hope, though, that the fact NFB are leading the way doesn’t mean that it’s a single-issue revamp. Let’s hope that for two things:
- the developers remember that not everyone with a disability is blind: accessibility is more than just assisting the visually impaired
- they use decent, semantic html for the site. Not every disability-lobbying site gets that.
“decent, semantic html for the site. Not every disability-lobbying site gets that.”
Tell me about it. Look at the horrendous visual design vomited out by nested tables and font tags on the International Center for Disability Resources on the Internet site.
March 31st, 2007 at 5:18 pm
I’m still waiting (I’ve been waiting for about a year, now) for the RNIB to explain to me why they have such a terrible web-site…
Accessibility isn’t by any means just about blind people, but even /their/ champion organisations can’t get it right. I don’t hold out much hope for anybody else, really.
April 7th, 2007 at 12:27 pm
I’m surprised they’ve taken so long to get to this point to be honest. I’ve always taken Amazon for granted, and it was only after looking at their source code I realised how truly horrible it is.
Surely moving to a more standards compliant layout would mean lighter code and therefore savings in terms of bandwidth?
April 10th, 2007 at 9:04 am
Stu, I agree with you. It amazes me with not only Amazon, but with a lot of these “monster” companies. With all the $$ they have, you would sure think they would focus more on their coding structure, etc. and bring in the most competent people.
December 28th, 2007 at 8:29 pm