Re: Request for site review

First, it takes a loooong time to load with some 100 images and nothing to do or read while it's all loading. On a fast cable modem it took all of 90 seconds to fully load; that certainly fails the "hold your breath" test. A simple refresh of the page takes just as long, although the images should be in the cache: it seems as if the code is making sure the images are downloaded anyway, cache or no (I timed this several times, each time it took 90 seconds).

(I stayed on for the test; normally, with nothing to read, I would have bailed out after 10 seconds already.)

Once loaded, the mousovers react very slowly, so frequently my mouse is in once place and the "active" item (arrow) somewhere else, left behind, not even trying to follow the mouse it seems. Someone surfing with images turned off is almost totally lost, unless they're using a browser that shows ALT attributes as popups (but the submenu is gone).

I don't know if it's accessible with a screen reader. It's certainly not *usable* without one! If I *had* to use this site, I'd hate every second of it.

At 17:05 2000-04-12 -0400, Bruce Bailey wrote:
>Dear Group,
>
>Please take at look at URL:
>http://www.sailor.lib.md.us/
>and provide me feedback (on or off the list as you see fit).
>
>(1)  What can Sailor do to improve accessibility.

Try usability first? 100 images or so is too much to wait for. Anything wrong with text? Even if you want mouseovers, that can be done with text as well.

>(2)  Is the site, as is, WCAG P1 compliant or not?  If not, why not?
>(3)  Is their a general technique for making such "pop-up" links accessible?
>(Or does one just ensure that said URLs are replicated elsewhere?)

Marjolein Katsma
HomeSite Help - http://hshelp.com/
Bookstore for Webmasters - http://hshelp.com/bookstore/bookstore.html

Received on Thursday, 13 April 2000 01:20:34 UTC