The tone of the website has a very tongue-in-cheek tone to me. Taking it seriously is like doing journalism research using The Onion.
If you are there for the content and not the design, then it works fine with a browser like Lynx. Thus all the content is entirely accessible.
https://w3c.github.io/csswg-drafts/mediaqueries-5/#mf-user-p...
The website can both have a shrill design and be accessible at the same time.
Accessibility doesn’t mean everything should be available to everybody at all times. That would be universal direct accessibility, which is impossible. Those without the internet or computer access cannot use a grocery website, but the grocery store is still open, and thus the groceries are still indirectly accessible. Providing an elevator as well as stairs means the 2nd floor is universally accessible, even though some cannot use the stairs.
Here, the content is provided by default with an unusual design. That design is part of their brand experience, which is why it has been posted. Some people cannot view through that experience, but they can still reasonably access the content using assistive technology. Thus the website is indirectly accessible.
Remove the design and you make the experience inaccessible to me. These are trade offs, not absolutes.
You’re assuming. It’s probably not a good idea to base one’s website’s accessibility strategy on such assumptions. Headaches and eyestrain are a real problem for many people. For example, people turn on dark mode because they have trouble looking at white backgrounds late at night or early in the morning. The same rule probably applies to bright colors.
> Remove the design and you make the experience inaccessible to me. These are trade offs, not absolutes.
I don’t think trade-offs are necessary. The website can have a shrill design and be accessible at the same time. For example, if the website was compatible with the browsers’ reader modes, then users could view the site in a simple black and white design.
They're going to keep the design. I'm going to be happy about that. You're not.
FWIW, the law says yes. And the law is right, IMO: we should not deprive a minority of their rights just because the majority is fine with the status quo.
And everyone will become disabled if they don't die young. Eyesight in particular is pretty much guaranteed to decline with age.
> ...requires federal agencies and any institution that receives federal funding to make electronic technology and information equally accessible for individuals with disabilities. This means that an organization's website must have all features just as accessible for individuals with disabilities as these features are for individuals without disabilities. For example, it must be equally easy for an individual with a disability to find information about an organization's services on their website as it is for non-disabled individuals to access this information.
This is an American law, but obviously other countries may have their own equivalents.
1. https://acs-web.com/digital-marketing-lexicon/section-508-of...
I don't think that website is either a US federal agency or receives any US federal funding.
IMHO it's hard to tell either way, because their website wasn't designed with ease-of-use in mind.
That said, here's some facts I was able to gather on their business:
> Whilst IT research remains our primary focus, we now offer executive high-end commercial IT services to organisations with unique problems to solve.
> ...we also have a large body of knowledge of older systems, many of which have now gone full-circle and fallen into disuse, technology that has been abandoned and forgotten. We occasionally do projects involving those, especially when nobody else seems to remember how they worked. Our knowledge-base includes legacy programming languages such as Fortran, data conversion from obscure file formats, and even assembly language coding on various platforms.
Based on these quotes, I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility that they have clients in government.
Anything is possible, I suppose, but everything I've seen on that site leads me to think it's not a company at all, but a personal hobbyist's website, or perhaps that of a hobbyist club.
From ada.gov:
> The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is a federal civil rights law that prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities in everyday activities.
And specific to web sites:
Restating the post I originally responded to:
> Should the vast majority of the world who do not have those health issues be deprived of its glory, because there is a minority who - very sadly and unfortunately for them - cannot look at it?
The key words from the comment are: "cannot look at it"
For comparison, some other similar discriminatory phrases from history: "cannot swim in it", "cannot drink from it", "cannot ride on it", "cannot enter it", "cannot buy it"
Just as a non-wheelchair accessible store is an example of discrimination, even if someone in a wheelchair could conceivably gain access to it by dragging themselves up the steps with their arms.
> Why don't you take legal action against them?
Because I'd honestly rather they do the right thing for the right reasons. Lawsuits should be a means of last resort.
And honestly, I'm not rich enough to fund a legal campaign. I'll leave that to someone with more money than I.
There is absolutely no legal requirement to either spend a fortune on designers, or reduce your website to some boring text-only mush, in the name of "accessibility". The website in question is accessible via a screen-reader, but even if it wasn't, they are not in a market where broad accessibility would be considered a legal requirement. If that were the case, half the websites on the internet would be taken offline.
If you did take this to court, you would lose.
Since you quoted and responded to it, it seems you are in agreement with the site authors. There are 10 themes. do all of them make any one person's eyes bleed?
The author of that website claims that they’ve seen multiple comments that complain about headaches and eyestrain. This is the first item in the FAQ, which suggests that it’s one of the most common complaints.
> There are 10 themes. do all of them make any one person's eyes bleed?
The theme selector is at the bottom of the page. It’s unlikely that a person who gets a headache/eyestrain from the design will find it in time.
People post all kind of things online, especially hyperbole. As one of the other FAQ questions notes a lot of people also complain about their eyes bleeding, but this has never actually happened.