I agree with you that both the vans and the chipotle website are really cool, but they also leave me a bit depressed about the future of the internet.
It's really great having these sites, but it's really awful when companies build them using technologies that will exlude people. Flash (the technology behind both sites you listed) is not usable for blind individuals and is difficult for vision impaired users to modify to make it readable.
The result is that search engines also have a hard time finding the data. In the chipotle faq is an entry about gluten free, but doing a search for that information returns zero results: http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Achipotle....
My message is that these tools should be built using Ajax in a manner that degrades to plain text - otherwise you shut out both vision impaired users and search engines. Neither is a segment you want to lose.
roxanna
· 2 years ago
design a vans
don o f m
· 6 months ago
i have an idea for marketing vans !... would 'yas like to heard bout it?...
EricFriedman
· 6 months ago
Sure - but I am not sure the folks at Vans read this blog, but perhaps they will check out your comment.
All Comments
It's really great having these sites, but it's really awful when companies build them using technologies that will exlude people. Flash (the technology behind both sites you listed) is not usable for blind individuals and is difficult for vision impaired users to modify to make it readable.
The result is that search engines also have a hard time finding the data. In the chipotle faq is an entry about gluten free, but doing a search for that information returns zero results:
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Achipotle....
My message is that these tools should be built using Ajax in a manner that degrades to plain text - otherwise you shut out both vision impaired users and search engines. Neither is a segment you want to lose.
will check out your comment.