BBC homepage enables one in five who have difficulty reading or using a mouse.
All quotes are from the BBC's December 2005 report into learning disabled audiences and the media: Not seen, not heard.
One in five people in the UK cannot search effectively using text. "Accessibility for this community requires a radically different approach to web design." Our visitors would prefer a BBC homepage with less links. A homepage with "easy to read words, pictures and clear navigation buttons." "Not enough people who make websites understand how to make them accessible for people with a learning disability." The MyBBC homepage endorses both Mencap's guidelines and the FPLD's guidelines for web designers.
archive screen grab to show before state. This screen grab demonstrates how a simple style sheet MyBB.css can transform the BBC News homepage to something like the MyBBC homepage. Careful CSS* editing will remove any differences. Like the MyBBC homepage it only displays a few text and image links, and the background, border and font colours of links change on focus or mouseover. This helps the user identify which link is active. Images scale with text under user control. a live version. Google video tastes almost as good!
Navigation layouts change dramatically across the many BBC domains. The result is that WCAG guideline 13 is compromised. However if the BBC style guidelines defined the use of CSS headings then MyBB.css could provide clear and consistent navigation.
Remember 'Hamm the piggy bank' in Toy Story? Limiting the number of links ensures that people who use a keyboard to navigate, enjoy surfing, rather than struggling through up to 250 links on each BBC page. The individual's choice of links** together with their browsing habits help guide suggestions: 'You might like'. This can help us find new friends by recommending relevant IRC chat channels, message boards and forums. Annotation enables us to share comments on stories as they happen. These comments help us assess viewing habits, the weather and the news.
We upload images, video and text stories of local, or personal interest. We use easy edit suite to tell a story. Third parties publish live newsfeeds in plain simple English.
*Try outline.css in Håkon Wium Lie's phD from a thread on CSS and accessibility: Why can't user style sheets remove excess content with display:none? Will CSS3 ensure that "user style sheets" work across domains? Could this RDF schema for GUIs, and a bookmarklet script demonstrate a working 'proof of concept' to show how CSS3 might be designed to improve user style control? W3C's DIAL working draft may also be of interest. A BBC feed with graphics. A formal objection to WCAG2
**A login allows one to edit the homepage, using copy and paste. Any link on the BBC site can be copied and pasted to the homepage, links that aren't used disappear back into the depths, to resurface like Wimbledon, when the time is ripe. Once a visitor has selected a language, bury this dialogue, as few visitors will ever make more than one language choice.
