Ouch! That’s One In Yer Eye for RNIB
The RNIB has often come in for criticism in the past for ‘hijacking’ web accessibility (sometimes a little unfairly, I would say). And if it’s not that it’s something else - like this animated icon, for example:
On the BCAB list Leon Gilbert writes: “The average frame duration is just 2 tenths of a second, and you get about 3 seconds to read the whole thing. Which is surely likely to cause eye strain (ironic). & The whole animation is just 120 x 60 pixels in size & is set to loop just 3 times.”
But Damon Rose (a writer on the BBC website’s Ouch microsite) goes even further:
Does anyone ever go to the RNIB website anyway?
Isn’t it really more aimed at sighted people who need reassurance and/or advice about elderly relatives? Or, more importantly, it’s about fundraising!
I put it to you, fellow debaters, that the RNIB website, with its distancing weird language and its begging cup out, is not really there for its ‘members’ or users.
I would like to see a really good lifestyle hub for blind people that doesn’t give me details about how bad my glaucoma might get … But might tell me the latest talking books being recorded are so I can look forward to it.
Come on RNIB, make this website blind friendly in content as well as in design innit!