Re: url correction:Re: A new iconography? (was:How to convince businesses to be accessible...)

> 
> http://www.ikea-usa.com

Had a look at this last night.  The first page looked promising after
a recovered HTTP protocol error but the rest went to blank frameset pages
and JavaScript links, so I switched to Netscape, to discover that all
the images were broken (status 404 - not found), which meant I was still
viewing it text only, but with the added benefit of white on pale yellow
text on the home page!

If the assembly diagrams were the same as gets packed with the furniture
in the UK, that would be a good feature about the site; it means that
they are in the top (my guess) 15 percentile of commercial sites as far
as solid information is concerned (one of the things I look for, but
rarely find is instruction manuals - service manuals are even better -
as they invariably give a much clearer picture of what the product does
than the normal list of selling points, although still often fail to
give significant technical information).

However, I think you will find that the reason these diagrams are all 
images is that Ikea's home is a minority language country in a market with
many languages, not accessiblity for those that cannot read.

I actually find the lack of narrative in these diagrams can be quite
frustrating as it is not always that easy to match up the flat, line,
drawings with the bits and pieces you actually have in front of you.
I can remember having to guess on some occassions.

Again, if they are just the standard assembly diagrams that they have
on the site, their inclusion is very cheap (but so would be the inclusion
of instruction manuals for other products).

(I also looked at the main site, but got hit by a request to download
Flash, with no explanation as to how it would benefit me (other than 
revealing the contents of a blanked out pane) and one of the pages 
formatted with text overstruck on text in Netscape 4.51 for Linux.)

Received on Sunday, 22 October 2000 06:13:28 UTC