The RNIB replies to web design criticism

Hello,

The RNIB relaunched their accessible website late in June, and came under
criticism by UK web developers, including myself. They have taken the
criticism and have recently publically replied:

http://www.rnib.org.uk/xpedio/groups/public/documents/publicwebsite/public_t
echqa.hcsp

Its good to see they've corrected many of the serious errors on their sites
(like the URLs).

I spotted this URL while looking through my referrer logs earlier today, and
I was surprised to see they were linking directly to my initial redesign
attempt. Its unfortunate that they've picked on the flaws of my design and
labelled them as criticisms against CSS - but the damage is done (and I
acknowledge we were warned right here to make sure our house was in order
before criticising others).

Their criticism of my redesign was largely due to my use of absolute
positioning (and rushing the job), which on narrow windows causes
overlapping and creating unreadable text - as they correctly point out -
this is far worse than the horizontal scrolling their site degrades to on
lack of space.

As a point of principle, and to prove that it can be done in CSS, I've spent
a few hours reimplementing the design using floats to eliminate any
overlapping problems. I felt it neccessary to correct the impression the
RNIB are creating about CSS layouts as inferior to presentational-based
HTML.


I really wanted to initiate a discussion on the reply given by the RNIB on
their website. Reading their answers, I feel more confused and concerned
than ever.


Thanks
Mike

Received on Friday, 18 July 2003 15:39:09 UTC