I’m supposed to be on holiday but after browsing around the UK and Eire Casio website for a new G-Shock - the only brand I’ve never broke, I had to file a “Crusade” article. I made the mistake of visiting the accessibility page you see.

Needless to say the website is tables-based with inline styles and JavaScript rollovers, as to be expected for 1999 but the accessibility page takes the biscuit here.

Apparently, if I’m partially sighted, I should use Internet Explorer and download some software called “WorksView” available from their site. I don’t know the technical details, but I first get an Active X warning, then a warning from my Firewall. Who’s the customer here? I want to see the content without having to jump through hoops and make technical decisions thank you.

Once installed (no browser restart required) the IE window is split in half along the horizontal axis. The top half contains the original website and the bottom half is a magnified version. But get this, you navigate by dragging your mouse around the small website. It’s like using VNC remote desktopping on your own PC - damned confusing.

By adopting a web standards approach, not only would they have a leaner, faster and easier to maintain website they’d go a long way towards offering real accessibility. By spending time (or money on a contractor) they could offer alternative Cascading Style Sheets instead of this “WorksView”.

Try it for yourself at the Casio - UK and Eire website.

I actually spotted this via Flickr at the weekend… Faruk AteÅŸ over at Kurafire has released version 8 of his website with some real sweet animation. What’s particularly interesting is that he’s used CSS and JavaScript to achieve said effects. He’s dubbed this FACE - Faruk’s Animated CSS Enhancements and has made the whole thing available in a zip file for you to try at home.

There are some wonderful effects going on in places and what appeals to me is the web standards approach - everything degrades nicely with JavaScript disabled and also that you’re not locked into using something like Flash that requires a plugin that has accessibility problems.

Head over to KuraFire Network now and keep an eye out for the 21 effects he and Tim Hofman have created.

*gasp* It’s full of stars….

Please update your bookmarks, on 1 September 2006 this article was updated and re-released via Accessites. This revised article is replicated on my blog for comments.

Best regards, Karl