Replies: 10 comments
Is Amazon marketing this is an accessible web site? It is lacking in that respect. It seems better suited as a rough draft for a wireless Palm-type interface.
Posted by JS @ 12/29/2001 12:29 AM EST
It'd help far more if the main site used valid HTML and basic labelling of images and image map areas. Once you've got your site optimised then you can start producing cut-down versions and talking about accessibility.
Posted by Matt Round @ 12/29/2001 07:24 AM EST
I'm interested in this site because of what they decided to remove. Therefore I agree with JS, that this site is better suited as a slim PDA version of the Amazon site. That's what I meant by "accessibility" -- not that this site is the paradigm of accessibility itself. (I still think it is a cool version of their site.)
Posted by John S. Rhodes @ 12/29/2001 09:39 AM EST
How do you find the site from their "real" front page?
Posted by KS @ 12/29/2001 11:06 AM EST
I found the amazon.com/access link on another weblog. I meant to give them credit, but I lost the URL.
Oh, just in case anyone cares, I own stock in Amazon. Not much, just a few shares. That's my disclaimer.
Posted by John S. Rhodes @ 12/29/2001 03:07 PM EST
A backlink check at google might recover the lost URL, plus a few other oddbits.
The site is also reachable via http://www.amazon.com/pocketpc/
OT - "A Census Bureau survey taken in 1999 showed that about 1.24 million people -- 34 percent of the 3.6 million people classified as visually impaired -- have access to the Internet. About 870,000, or 24 percent of those surveyed, said they use a computer on a regular basis." NewsFactor
Posted by sean @ 12/29/2001 10:43 PM EST
i'm betting you saw it on one of the following six blogs:
http://blogdex.media.mit.edu/browseSource.asp?url=http://www.amazon.com/access/
or if that url is too long, try this one:
http://makeashorterlink.com/?J1D52324
my guess would be olivier's webvoice blog - how did i do? :-)
Posted by john @ 12/30/2001 01:25 AM EST
or http://liga1.com/article.php?sid=132&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0 The post mentions someone at the CHI-WEB list posting the link, althoug after the aforementioned blogs :)
Posted by Peter @ 12/30/2001 10:36 AM EST
I've been having various E-mails with the Amazon executive, who seems unable to grasp simple concepts like "Your 'accessible' site makes it impossible to do things the real site does." They're quite convinced their way of doing things is the right one despite mounting expert evidence.
Posted by Joe Clark @ 12/31/2001 09:44 AM EST
Trying to make sense of this page with a screen reader is a bit difficult, especially for its size. The page does not put things in a logical order (the "Find" edit box should come before the "All products" pull-down box; it will then read "Find (blank) in (All products)). Too many links, and the "Shopping is safe" link should be banished to the very end of the page, as it is not as important in the task space as the form on the page and the links.
They should at least download a free screen reader (such as IBM's HPR) and test it out before donning it "accessible." Giving it the "access" name is really a misnomer here.
Posted by Blind User @ 01/02/2002 12:07 PM EST