/Access all areas/ www.mylo.tv
30/01/2008 | Filed under Develop > Access all areas
Graphic designer Miles Noble was asked to redesign the personal site of dance music saviour Mylo. Alastair Campbell tests it for accessibility
The website for Mylo, www.mylo.tv, was recently redesigned by .net reader Miles Noble, who asked us to check it for accessibility. My tests revealed a few issues that have been looked at before, such as using alternatives for images and image maps, fixed fonts and layouts, and the use of structural HTML. However, there are also a couple of new points to pick out, so I’ll focus on these here.
The main navigation of the website appears to be fairly straightforward, with “biography”, “discography” and so on. Selecting most options opens a new page, as you would expect, but two of the options take you to different sites (a shop and MySpace). This issue would crop up if the site was reviewed from an Information Architecture point of view, where each navigation mechanism should act in a predictable way. People don’t often realise that this issue was written into the accessibility guidelines as well (“Use navigation mechanisms in a consistent manner”). Each link within a homogenous set should behave in exactly the same way, so finding yourself on MySpace is what the guidelines would call a “change of context”.
The easiest solution for this would be to separate the links that go to other sites. Visually, they could be last, with a separator between the sets of links that fits the design. In the code, the links would be in separate lists, or, due to the current implementation, separate image maps with a hidden heading between them.
Another aspect of the same issue is that the site opens new windows for the album covers, which can also cause problems for people with visual or cognitive impairments. If a completely new browser window is opened, people can get confused when the back button doesn’t work. If a smaller pop-up is used, people using screen magnifiers may not be aware of it, as they only view a small area of the screen at a time.
The key advice here is to avoid new windows wherever possible, but if they are used, inform the user what will happen, either in link text or alt text, as follows:
<a href=”javascript:popImage(‘bigalbum6.jpg’)”>
<img src=” album6.jpg” alt=”Mylow Free Form Five (opens in new window)”/>
</a>
Of course, the (roughly) four per cent of people without JavaScript enabled can’t get at the pop-up window content because it relies on JavaScript. It’s possible to get around this issue by including a valid link and using JavaScript to add the pop-up unobtrusively. Luckily, Accessify has a handy wizard that will do the job for you.
Comments
ndk / 30/01/2008 / 15:31
iFrames? image maps for menu? Redesign? umm...
smegger / 30/01/2008 / 16:49 / http://www.sitemakers.co.uk
It does seem pretty crude to be honest, I think graphically its ok but slightly dated. Functionality you covered nicely in the article.
Jonas / 03/02/2008 / 20:15
The website is a bit of a joke... I'm surprised that you are actually reviewing a site like this, when there is so much good work out there.
Sam / 10/02/2008 / 01:10
It's called sorting a mate out... even back in the days of it was the same guys looking after each other.
1996 / 14/02/2008 / 00:47
I want my website back.
