As Fred Mangels points out on his blog, City Councilwoman Polly Endert has her web site up for her campaign for re-election to the Eureka City Council’s 2nd Ward seat. Fred complains that the page(s) are too wide for his browser and he has to scroll horizontally to see all of them. He must mean his screen resolution is set too low to allow him to expand his browser window to accommodate a wider view port. He is also wrong that this is a problem for “most” people. I don’t know what resolution his monitor is set at, but my guess is that it’s 800 x 600. Statistics indicate that by far most people are running at resolutions of 1024 px or higher. Here is a link to another site that backs this up. Very few people are still running at 800 X 600. However, even if it’s only 8%, when you are running for city council should you be annoying that many potential voters?
For the record, all the pages on Polly Endert’s site are images. Not that they contain images. Each whole page is a single image. The home page is 1040 pixels wide. So even people (about 48% according to the statistics) that are running at 1024 resolution would have to scroll sideways to see the full page. The other pages on her site are 958 pixels wide.
Fred also point out that the George Clark/Linda Atkins combined web site is also wider than his browser view port. Since their site is 875 pixels wide this seems to confirm that Fred falls in to 8% still using 80
0 X 600 resolution.
But beyond the width issue, using a single image for each page as Endert’s site does, means there is no text to be read by people who are visually impaired and using screen readers. Perhaps there are not many visually impaired computer users in the 2nd District of Eureka. But it still seems like a lack of sensitivity to the issue. Target recently settled a law suit over being unfriendly to the visually impaired, and their trangression was far less egregious (they weren’t using text descriptions in the page code on product images that screen reading software would read to help identify content). It may just be laziness on the part of the web designer. Or maybe they don’t really have one and the site is being managed by someone’s nephew who is “good with computers.”
Fred, you’ve asked a good question that has no simple answer. It’s one we deal with on every web design project. It really depends on what you want the site to do and who your audience is. Each case is different. If you have a good deal of information and options to present on a given page, you can choose to design for a wider resolution and thus place more options “above the fold” rather than pushing it down the page where people have to scroll to even know it’s there. You may be willing to annoy the 8% of users at lower resolution in favor of providing a better user experience for everyone else. Factors in making this decision may include assumptions as to who the 8% of users are compared to who those with higher resolutions are.
BTW, as I alluded to on my blog, a page created using 800×600 would be usable on a computer using higher resolution but not the other way around, right? Wouldn’t it just make sense to use 800×600 and cover all your bases?
You are correct. My desktop is set to 800×600. My laptop is set higher. Silly me. I assumed most people use 800×600.
I didn’t even pick up the fact those pages are images. Hate it when people do that, too. Had a friend who ran for state assembly a few years ago that did that to his campaign page. He said he did it so it would be more difficult to hack his web site(???). Whatever.
“And with other services like WordPress.com you can have an easy to manage site…”
Oysters and Ale is exactly this. Blog templates immediately give sites a well-designed look, and they’re free, or at worst, cheap.
It’s true that if you are trying to build a web site and you are not technically savvy it can be confusing. But someone knew enough to register a domain name, get a hosting account and create some image files. They also knew enough to take those images and turn them in to image maps that make the buttons clickable. That’s a design choice – one that ignores accessibility. You don’t necessarily have to be a pro to know that a blind people can’t see the images.
It’s also true that you can have a web site up and running in minutes with little knowledge or investment. A quick Google search for “campaign web sites” turns up some very affordable services.
And with other services like WordPress.com you can have an easy to manage site (it doesn’t have to be a blog, but can include a blog) very quickly and cheaply. 20 minutes with the right web consultant could give you that information. How much could that cost?
Not many candidates can afford to pay someone to prepare a website. And for someone who is trying to do it themselves it is like trying to learn Martian with a Russian textbook.
Obviously Clark and Atkins have professionally prepared websites.
Soon, all candidates will have to devote more money to getting a professional site – and that will significantly add to the cost of mounting a political campaign, and puts people without resources at a significant disadvantage.
The cost of running a campaign up here has increased dramatically since 2000, astronomically even. Even without factoring in the cost of websites.
I really think this is a big deal. It’s amazing how many public transit websites aren’t accessible. I wrote an article about it with relevant info for other applications: “Creating Accesible Transit Websites”