Blogging And All That Malarkey

Dear Taylor Swift

(On 24th December 2009, the site that this letter refers to was replaced.)

Dear Taylor, I just had to write.

I am a huge fan. I came to your concert in Manchester (UK) and enjoyed myself enormously. The attention to detail in your staging was amazing. The way that you engaged, in particular with those at the back of the venue, and made everyone feel special showed that you genuinely care about your audience.

But I’m sad that your web site lets some of your most important fans — those who have special needs — down, in ways that you might not realise. Not that I blame you, you’re an artist, not a web designer or developer.

To be fair, yours isn’t the only country artist site that is inaccessible to people with disabilities. Both Shania Twain’s and Dolly Parton’s also make it either very difficult or impossible for some people to access their content. So I would like to show you how your site could be improved in small ways that would make a huge difference to a lot of people, with or without disabilities.

Taylor Swift web site

Your home page uses a combination of technologies that make it difficult (at best) and impossible (at worst) for your fans who have either visual impairments or cannot use a mouse to get to almost all of your content.

Your scrapbook looks fantastic, but everything inside it is invisible to people who people who do not or cannot have Flash installed on their computers (and to search engines like Google). Here is what people without Flash see on your site.

Taylor Swift web site (Javascript disabled)

Flash is also not available on Apple’s iPhone or iPod Touch, so potentially thousands of fans, even those who have no disabilities, cannot access your news, media, community pages, calendar, tour dates. They also cannot find links to buy your merchandise or vote for you on People's Choice or Great American Country.

Taylor Swift web site (iPhone)

Worse still, is that your scrapbook Flash movie is embedded using Javascript. This adds another barrier to accessibility, as no alternative content is provided for people without Javascript.

The fact that many of the links from your scrapbook open new browser windows adds another annoyance for people who use assistive technologies. These include partially sighted people who use screen magnifiers and people who are blind and use screen-reading software.

For these people, alternatives to images are vital. This alt text turns a site from unusable to usable and takes only seconds to add to a site. Your home page links to your Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and YouTube pages could be made instantly more accessible just by adding simple alt text to your images.

Taylor Swift web site (Images and Javascript disabled)

Finally, I’m sure that people with disabilities would love to join your mailing list — especially to learn about your news if your site itself can't help them. Unfortunately your signup form is also not accessible as it does not include labels for the email address and zip code fields. Fixing inaccessible forms will take an experienced web designer only a minute or two. (I have included the accessible form code for your designers to cut-and-paste into your site.)

Why am I writing this in public? It’s not to score points or to embarrass you. Accessibility is still a huge problem on the web and although things are changing slowly, there are still plenty of web designers and developers who can learn from the ways to improve sites like yours.

I know that you care about your fans and I’m sure that you would want every one to have access to everything on your site. I hope that you will talk to your management and to your web designers about accessibility. The effort needed to make your site accessible won’t be huge, but the benefits to everybody will be.

Love and happy holidays,

Andy

(On 24th December 2009, the site that this letter refers to was replaced.)

Leave your comment

John Holdun

November 30 2009 @ 09:43am #

Cute, but also now a useful resource toward which to point others in a similar position. Thanks, Andy! Let us know if Ms. Swift sees it.

Ben Bodien

November 30 2009 @ 08:29pm #

Some great points, and superbly illustrated with screenshots to drive the point home.

Have you sent an email to her management, and label, linking to this?

Bobby Jack

November 30 2009 @ 08:45pm #

This is a great explanation and demonstration of the problem - I’d like to see these for EVERY website :) Let’s hope Taylor’s people take note. I’m starting to wonder if/hope that the iPhone’s lack of flash support will finally break people’s dependency on it.

Aaron Russell

November 30 2009 @ 08:51pm #

You went to see Taylor Swift at Manchester too? Ahh, you should have said, we could have met up :P

Hope she responds.

Gary

November 30 2009 @ 08:57pm #

~~All good, except for the two typos in the attached form code… (2 x closing paragraph tags).~~

(Ed says: All fixed now, thanks Gary.)

Paul Downey

November 30 2009 @ 09:58pm #

A nicer way of making the point than my jibes at “inspirational” web design sites:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/psd/4138839530/

Mat Harden

November 30 2009 @ 10:02pm #

Very good letter. A lesson to all developers out there. It only takes a tiny bit more thought and effort to achieve so much more. Good effort writing their code for them, a nice gesture.

Sulcalibur

December 1 2009 @ 02:11am #

My wife likes her music and when she went to the official site a week or so back, it was followed with “argghh, this looks crap!”

max.w

December 1 2009 @ 06:24am #

Sorry but I don’t see the point here, this site was designed and built for website browsers only if they wanted to go down the road of full accessibility then it would obviously cater to those needs. Sure your points are valid but your looking at this purely from a accessibility point and not from an website experience point of view.
This site is an interactive flash experience and thats all there is to it, there are designers who think accessibility, web standards etc and those who focus on creating a immersive experiences only, this project obviously focused on the later. I think you just need to take this site as it is.

Scrivs

December 1 2009 @ 06:36am #

“...from a accessibility point and not from an website experience point of view.”

Pretty sure the two go hand in hand to most people. If the site isn’t accessible to you then what kind of experience is that?

“...there are designers who think accessibility, web standards etc and those who focus on creating a immersive experiences only…”

Again, what kind of immersive experience am I going to have if I can’t access the site properly?

I built a house with the coolest gadgets and the greatest party in the world happening inside. However, I installed a special door that can only be opened by people who have the power to move objects with their mind. The rest of the people who can’t access this stuff? Tough luck because I am trying to create an immersive experience that everyone can enjoy. And by everyone, I mean those with the special mind powers.

Want to get into my house? Sorry Charlie, you just don’t cut the mustard.

Jonathan

December 1 2009 @ 06:39am #

Uh… the point is ALL websites should “go down the down to full accessibility.” You’re leaving out portions of your potential audience if you don’t. For those users, you may as well put Kanye West’s picture in front of her site and call it a day.

As a fan of Taylor, I can’t help but think she will not be pleased if/when she hears about this.

Paul Downey

December 1 2009 @ 06:39am #

“if they wanted to go down the road of full accessibility then it would obviously cater to those needs.” in many countries there are legal requirements placed upon making buildings, services and web sites accessible to all.

I’d be more OK with the “immersive experience” argument if we were talking about a video game or an application, but sites like this wanting to exhibit good design and yet reach a wide audience as possible can do so as Andy has shown without too much effort and become part of the Web, working well with any browser and usable by machines, and people, regardless of their ability to download and use a vendor technology from a single supplier.

Andy Clarke

December 1 2009 @ 06:40am #

max.w: If they wanted to go down the road of full accessibility then it would obviously cater to those needs.

— So it’s about what’s good for the client, web site owner, designer or developer. Well that’s OK then. Heaven forbid that they need to take the needs of their paying customers into account. I guess (following your (un)logic) that Taylor would be happy to hear that some (hell, even one) of her fans can’t interact with her, look up her concert dates or buy her albums through her site.

Sure your points are valid but your looking at this purely from a accessibility point and not from an website experience point of view.

— That’s right, silly me. User experience has nothing to do with accessibility at all. Not even for people who are lucky enough to use an iPhone, nevermind people who are unlucky enough to need to use a screen-reader or other assistive technology.

This site is an interactive flash experience and that’s all there is to it, there are designers who think accessibility, web standards etc. and those who focus on creating a immersive experiences only.

— Right again. I guess the legion of talented UX designers that I know should stop where they are and understand that the only way to create a rich user experience is to make inaccessible Flash interfaces.

Adam

December 1 2009 @ 06:41am #

Re: max.w:

There was a time when this was a fair dichotomy. That time was 2001. Surely this group has at least *some* fans with poor or no eye-sight or, perhaps, mobile phones. A few hours’ work on alt text and indexable flash content would improve their google search rankings and usability for those users.

More importantly, a longer time commitment could create a site that was worth returning to, linking to, sharing with others, rather than a one-time “experience.” And it could be done in a way that retained all of the distinctive flash elements for those who can and would like to see them, but was also deeper and more accessible for those who wanted just the content.

Design or usability? The web says: “both, please.”

Brenden Sparks

December 1 2009 @ 06:41am #

@max.w:

You’ve got a quirky sense of humor posting that on Nov 30th.

If that wasn’t posted in jest then you should read more of what Andy’s written. You might learn something.

Rob Mason

December 1 2009 @ 06:43am #

Dear Max.
Stop being an ignorant cretinous idiot. Accessibility is an essential component of modern website design and a core of any “immersive experience”. Dullard.
Yours,
The Whole of the Universe

Steve G

December 1 2009 @ 06:43am #

@max.w. Immersive for the sake of it isn’t such a good idea though IMHO. Anyway there is still something that could be done without reducing the experience for visual users that would enable non-visual users to still access the content.

Often client’s don’t know they should be aware of accessibility,they come to us because we are meant to know, so I’d put it that we web designers/developers should point this out as a matter of duty if not ethics.

Have to say is the Captcha method Andy has used for replies usable with a Screen Reader, no Alt text (makes sense tho’ given a bot could read that).

Andy Clarke

December 1 2009 @ 06:45am #

Steve G: Have to say is the Captcha method Andy has used for replies usable with a Screen Reader, no Alt text (makes sense tho’ given a bot could read that).

— I hate my life.

Mark Kawakami

December 1 2009 @ 06:48am #

Speaking as someone who has direct experience with people with visual impairments, I have to say that max.w is wildly short-sighted. People with visual impairments tend to take their music very seriously, because because listening is fundamental to how they interact with the world, and listening to music one of their fundamental pleasures. They TREASURE their music. Any Taylor Swift fan who has trouble seeing is likely to be amongst her most devoted fans. An “immersive” experience is what they seek in a musician, and frankly, this site denies it to them in a cruel and callous way.

For any site to forgo accessibility is simply negligent, but for a musician’s site to forgo accessibility is downright uncaring.

csleh

December 1 2009 @ 06:49am #

Accessibility may not be of interest to the developer, but the iphone limitations certainly should be. All those teeny-boppers forced to go to rumor sites instead of Swift’s site is bad for business.
I guess no flash on the iphone is good for pointing out flaws in site design.

Erwin Heiser

December 1 2009 @ 06:50am #

What little HTML there is on the homepage is riddled with table-based markup, doesn’t even have a doctype, font tags etc…
Safe to say that whoever built this site isn’t too clued in to what modern web design is, let alone understand accessibility issues.

Ryan Taylor

December 1 2009 @ 06:53am #

@max.w If only I’d known sooner that accessibility and an immersive experiences were mutually exclusive I could have saved myself all the hassle and just learned Flash. You’ve really opened my eyes. Thank you.

@Andy Sorry mate, I’m going to have to throw your book out. You’ve clearly got it all wrong. What were you thinking?

Tim Letscher

December 1 2009 @ 06:53am #

Nice smackdown on Max, Andy.

As for the article, I’ll reiterate what’s said above in thanking you for the concise critique and informative screen grabs. I’d love to see the followup from Taylor Swift’s camp, if any. I hope it’s an eye-opener.

Cheers, Tim

Steve G

December 1 2009 @ 06:53am #

@Andy, sorry;-)

Mark Kawakami

December 1 2009 @ 06:56am #

Or to put it another way: “I’m really happy for you, Imma let you finish, but Beyonce has a way more accessible website!”

Gonzalo González Mora

December 1 2009 @ 06:56am #

Regarding the CAPTCHA, you could try the method Kyle Weems uses in his website CSSquirrel. If I recall correctly, a blind user said that it worked for him.

Steve G

December 1 2009 @ 07:02am #

Not to drag the captcha thing on but @Gonzalo González Mora, I always fire up JAWS and listen to my websites with my eyes closed. You’d be surprised what you spot when you actually experience it for yourself. I’d recommend it to anyone. The more you experience your site as others will the better you’ll make your site.

Richard

December 1 2009 @ 07:06am #

@max.w
There are SO many things wrong with your post it is, by today’s standards, surely impossible to have not been written in jest? By an idiot.

Please enjoy your richly deserved fifteen minutes of roasting hot fame.

Eighteentee

December 1 2009 @ 07:26am #

@max.w I think your post must have been stuck in a time-warp from 2001. As far as I’m concerned far to much of this Flash-only rubbish is peddled by the music industry for their artists. Utter crap. No excuse.

Andy Clarke

December 1 2009 @ 08:17am #

OK, let’s leave off max.w. We’ve made him suffer enough. And as Mark Kawakami so rightly says, by the look of the music industry in general and country artists in particular, Max’s view isn’t unusual. Max isn’t to blame.

Neither is Taylor. She is an incredible performer and song writer and if the show I saw was anything to go by, a real professional. Unfortunately, the company who made her web site don’t share her talents as their work for artists like Shania Twain and Dolly Parton demonstrates.

Of course the issues of poor accessibility aren’t limited to the music industry or to Mad Dancer Media. It’s sobering that on Blue Beanie Day where we, who pride ourselves on our support for standards and accessibility, pat ourselves on the back for a job well done, must not forget that the job that Jeffrey started with Designing With Web Standards is far from done.

Ross McFarlane

December 1 2009 @ 08:49am #

Oh, Max.

“Dear wheelchair user, you’ll just have accept these stairs as they are.”

How’s that?

Jan

December 1 2009 @ 11:17am #

Giving someone the impression that web standards and accessibility were called into life to give people the opportunity to brand others to be “an idiot”, “a ignorant cretinous idiot” and a “dullard”, might not exactly persuade them. Why not just stick to YouTube?

DAZ

December 1 2009 @ 06:28pm #

Maybe this just shows that there is strong correlation between an artist’s musical ability and quality of their website?

Andy Clarke

December 1 2009 @ 06:51pm #

DAZ: Maybe this just shows that there is strong correlation between an artist’s musical ability and quality of their website?

— Cheap shot and not necessary. Most major artist’s web sites are handled by the record label (who usually know very little about the web) or their management (even less) and sub-contracted to a third-party. In this case it’s the web designers and developers, who seem to know least of all, who are at fault. Once again it come down to standards, both professional and web.

Steve Rydz

December 1 2009 @ 07:21pm #

Hi Andy,

I really admire the sentiment behind this letter however I can’t help but think you may be fighting a losing battle.

I have some experience of the music industry and you are right in what you say above, that the web site has nothing to do with the artist themselves. The labels control pretty much everything and they don’t care about accessibility or in being progressive or anything like it. The only reason an artist would have a standards based, accessible site is if the label randomly chooses a decent agency but 95% of the time they will go for Flash, they just can’t see past it.

DAZ

December 1 2009 @ 07:37pm #

Hey Andy, I know it’s early but where’s the sense of humour?

That there was tongue in cheek, ribbing your taste in music, not implying that Taylor built the site herself!

Barry Bloye

December 1 2009 @ 10:17pm #

I can’t help but read this in the style of Eminem’s Stan.

Scared of what might happen if Taylor doesn’t write back…

josh

December 3 2009 @ 08:19am #

You went to a Taylor Swift concert?

CupidsToejam

December 3 2009 @ 11:24am #

Great points Andy. Its a shame most common folk fall into these flash design traps from flash designers who know nothing else but flash. The arent web developers, just movie producers. Its sad.

Andy Clarke

December 3 2009 @ 11:36am #

DAZ: Hey Andy, I know it’s early but where’s the sense of humour?

— And I’m late replying. Sorry, I was too engrossed listening to country tunes.

Barry Bloye: I can’t help but read this in the style of Eminem’s Stan. Scared of what might happen if Taylor doesn’t write back

— I honestly hope that someone from Big Machine Records (Taylor’s label) does pick up on this and write back. It’s not just an issue for them or for Taylor, but they/she can take the lead in showing that music company and artist sites can be accessible as well as beautifully designed. If they do write, I’ll help them any way I can.

josh: You went to a Taylor Swift concert?

— Yessiree. I’m a fan, a big fan.

Matthew Fabb

December 4 2009 @ 05:10am #

You complain about how the site is inaccessible to screen readers without testing it, going on the incorrect assumption that screen readers don’t read Flash, when they do. Adobe has worked to improve this side of Flash quite some time.

Here’s Adobe Flash Player 10 overview page mentioning compatible screen readers:
http://www.adobe.com/accessibility/products/flashplayer/overview.html

Also incorrect is that Google cannot read and index the Flash files, since Adobe has provided search engines a headless Flash Player (no graphics, but runs the application and pulls out text & links). In turn they have worked with Google to improve how the headless player works, as this Google blog post indicates:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/06/improved-flash-indexing.html

That said, I think Flash sites like that should still have alternative HTML sites, especially for devices like the iPhone that don’t have Flash. However, the mobile/device audience without Flash is still small enough, that many companies find it’s not worth the investment.

Andy Clarke

December 4 2009 @ 06:01am #

Matthew Fabb: You complain about how the site is inaccessible to screen readers without testing it, going on the incorrect assumption that screen readers don’t read Flash, when they do. Adobe has worked to improve this side of Flash quite some time.

— You‘re right that Adobe has improved Flash accessibility in relation to screen-readers. You’re also right that Google can index Flash content.

But as with most technologies (and leaving aside the fact that accessibility is more than just about screen-reader use), whether a Flash interface is accessible or not is in the hands of the developers who make it.

What I said was the site uses a combination of technologies that make it difficult (at best) and impossible (at worst) for [your] fans who have either visual impairments or cannot use a mouse to get to almost all of your content. I stand by this completely. This and the other incontrovertible facts about missing alt text, inaccessible forms and a generally very poor coding standard.

That said, I think Flash sites like that should still have alternative HTML sites, especially for devices like the iPhone that don’t have Flash. However, the mobile/device audience without Flash is still small enough, that many companies find it’s not worth the investment.

— Sadly many companies and organisations still look at accessibility in the same way. If the audience is small, the effort involved is not worth the investment (sic). The way I hope Taylor would look at it is if even one person has a problem, then it’s a problem worth fixing.

Matthew Fabb

December 4 2009 @ 12:23pm #

Currently all text content in Flash Player 10 is readable on default for by screen readers. Then any object (movieclips, buttons, graphics) can be given a name (equivalent of alt), description (equivalent of longdesc ), shortcut and tab index. That’s extra work on the developers part, but it’s no different than adding attributes like alt in HTML, in which some developers/agencies will take the effort and some won’t.

There’s other best practices to follow, but when followed Flash content can be just as accessible as HTML content. How it’s read is in the hands of the developer, no different than HTML.

Angry of Aberystwyth

December 5 2009 @ 07:07am #

So, Did you get a reply or was it just a case of the pointless green ink filled tranquilizer dart of time landing in the gutter of destiny?

(Ed says: That’s almost Blackadder quality. Please leave a personally identifiable URL next time (we like to know who you are) or a less funny reply might be deleted.)

John Dowdell

December 6 2009 @ 06:38am #

Hi Andy, sorry I’m late here… am I understanding correctly that you’re not satisfied with a particular website because of a range of interface & development choices made in its creation, and also that the use of Flash is objectionable because Apple’s newer devices don’t permit it? Are these the core ideas?

(I agree with your comment in #42 that we don’t always design for a diversity of audience needs, whatever the technology.)

tx, jd/adobe

Andy Clarke

December 6 2009 @ 07:05am #

John Dowdell: Am I understanding correctly that you’re not satisfied with a particular website because of a range of interface & development choices made in its creation, and also that the use of Flash is objectionable because Apple’s newer devices don’t permit it? Are these the core ideas?

— I’m sorry if I didn’t make myself clear enough. The unfortunate problem with Taylor’s site (and a good many other country artist’s) is not that it has largely been made in Flash, but the many other and associated problems that make the site either difficult or impossible for some people to use.

(A quick recap.) The Flash scrapbook is loaded by Javascript and no alternative content has been provided. Not a single word, so no Javascript enabled or Flash not installed (or supported on a device) means no content. This, plus a lack of alternatives to images poorly coded forms and tables for layout. Need I go on?

I’m not picking on Taylor (I’m a huge fan) or on her managers or record company. But Taylor’s site lets some of her most important fans down. The sad thing is, is that she is not alone and the problems her site potentially causes people can be very easily fixed if the will is there to fix them.

John Dowdell

December 6 2009 @ 08:04am #

... but I thought that was what I asked, whether the main complaint was about the range of design/implementation choices made in that site, and confirming that the Flash discussion was a separate issue…?

(I’m trying to summarize the essay, make it more readily accessible, thanks.)

jd/adobe

Lee

December 7 2009 @ 07:38am #

Scary, I was going through a defect report recently for a website that legally has to be accessible, and a manager asked something like “What about the 99% of people that aren’t disabled? Why are we making it worse for them?”. Not “Aren’t we?” but “Why are we?”. I was momentarily stunned. Seems that for whatever reason, there are many people that assume making a website accessible means making compromises.

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Dear Taylor Swift

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Jonathan

Adam

csleh

Jan

Lee

Hardboiled Web Design by Andy Clarke