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The Olympic 2012 Logo fiasco
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By: Peter Abrahams, Practice Leader - Accessibility and Usability, Bloor Research
Published: 8th June 2007
Copyright Bloor Research © 2007
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I was away when the Olympic logo fiasco blew up. For those who do not know, the logo for the 2012 Olympics in London was unveiled earlier this week. The first furore was about the logo itself, I will not comment on it except to say I am not surprised by the negative reaction.
The second furore was about a video on the Olympic web site showing how the logo might be used. This had fast flashing images that caused epileptic fits. The W3C standards on accessibility specifically state that web sites should not use flashing images of this sort; as do the guidelines of OFCOM (the regulator for communications in the UK).
The fall out from this has been a lot of bad press worldwide and this has certainly damaged the reputation of the Olympic organising committee. The question that it begs is "If they are going to mess up the web site in such a silly way what else are they going to get wrong?" This may be the first time that not complying with the accessibility standards has caused reputational damage. Hopefully it will raise the issue in the minds of web designers and website owners.
This story led me to look at the Olympic website with my accessibility hat on and I am afraid there is more bad news lurking under the covers.
But firstly the good news, accessibility has been thought about. The website has an ‘accessibility’ page and it says the right sorts of things:
- ‘London 2012 is fully committed to ensuring its website is accessible and inclusive for all its users’.
- ‘Its design and build has taken into account the following guidelines:
- The W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
- The Disability Discrimination Act (DDA, part three)’
- etc.
The flashing logo obviously shows that they do not do sufficient testing against the standards they have set themselves. But if it was an isolated incident you could see it as something unusual slipping through the quality control net.
However I ran some other tests:
- I ran the W3C HTML Validator against the home page and it flagged 42 errors. This test only takes a moment to run so there is absolutely no excuse for this level of slopping coding.
- I then ran the same validator against the ‘accessibility’ page and got 50 errors.
- Next I ran the CSS validator against the ‘accessibility’ page, which gave me 7 errors and 177 warnings.
Note this is before I tried any accessibility checks. I ran an accessibility check using TV Total Validator and it picked up 18 accessibility issues.
It is perfectly possible to develop clean websites. Bad HTML often masked accessibility or content problems. Bad HTML also means that the site may not render as expected on all browsers.
We are in the early stages of the Olympic development; now is the moment to clean up the website HTML and ensure that any new pages or content are of a standard that reflects the excellence of the world class competitors in the Olympics and the Paralympic Games.
For a continuing discussion on accessibility of major sporting web sites see my blog on Wimbledon.
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8th June 2007: 'Rumbob' said:
What's the issue? Running TotalValidator.com (using the Firefox extension) against your article on IT-Director.com comes up with 159 errors and fails even level A on the WAI scale. Don't pick on other websites when your own fails so miserably.
Reply to Rumbob?
8th June 2007: 'Toffee Tart' said:
Have to agree with Rumbob - you must first practice what you preach. At least the Olympics website looks professionally designed and loads fast. Perhaps you can ask their designers to help you out.
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8th June 2007: 'Edward Poole' said:
159 errors on IT-Director.com? LOL. Makes the Olympic site look positively accessible.
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8th June 2007: 'Larry' said:
This must be why IT-Director.com doesn't display the TotalValidator.com badge or W3C valid (xhtml / css) icons on their website!! Poor show.
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8th June 2007: 'Web Master' said:
Dear Rumbob et al,
Not sure how you arrived at these figures. 159 errors? Where? I performed the same test on Peter's article on IT-Director.com and got the following report:
Started at: 13:12:33 GMT, June 08, 2007
Time taken: 11 seconds
Validator Version: v4.0.2
Total pages checked: 1
Total links checked: 122
Total errors found: 0 Options: * Accessibility: AAA
* Check for broken links: true
* DOCTYPE: Auto Detect ...
Most pages on IT-Director.com validate perfectly using the excellent TotalValidator.com and W3C validator.
We do not display the logos from W3C and TotalValidator as some pages are "broken" - being a portal we pull content from 3rd party sources and pages can break!
The only errors I get with the W3 validator appear to be generated by the OpenAds advertising engine - the application uses deprecated tags to display flash animations (as identified by David Rush).
I am more than happy to discuss this offline, please email: webmaster@it-analysis.com Best WishesMiles
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9th June 2007: 'john' said:
I cannot believe all of you are wasting energy arguing over the validity of a website's code. Get a life.
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8th June 2007: 'Gerry' said:
The W3C validator fails on IT-Director.com. You cannot even get a page to validate into XHTML 1.0 transitional! I get 12 errors, all based around the DATAllegro banner placement.
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8th June 2007: 'Gerry' said:
When running the W3C CSS validator against IT-Director.com I get a strange error message: "Servlet has thrown exception:javax.servlet.ServletException: Timed out" I guess IT-Director.com's stylesheets are just too messy!
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8th June 2007: 'Danny S' said:
"they do not do sufficient testing against the standards they have set themselves" - hark at the self proclaimed accessibility expert!!!
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8th June 2007: 'Neil M' said:
Would be good to hear from the people behind IT-Director.com and the Olympic website to learn what is going on behind the scenes. Both websites are clearly inaccessible and present a grave humiliation.
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8th June 2007: 'Stephen Oates' said:
"It is perfectly possible to develop clean websites" .. so what's your excuse? Why so many errors? Why? Why? Why?
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8th June 2007: 'David Rush' said:
It appears as though the advertising engine being utilised on IT-Director.com is responsible for the failed XHTML validation. It uses deprecated embed tags for a start! Following the links back to the server (adserv.it-analysis.com) I can see it uses OpenAds - an open source PHP application (formerly PHPAdsnew). Perhaps if the developers Google for "Flash Satay" they can fix the problems with the Macromedia swf movie...
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8th June 2007: 'Web Master' said:
David, Thank you for your observation. We came to the same conclusion and have already started to patch OpenAds for XHTML compliance - you'll notice that the static .gif banners now have a closed image tag... Best Wishes Miles
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8th June 2007: 'Bob' said:
TotalValidator against IT-Director.com reports: Validator Version: v4.0.2
Total links checked: 112
Total errors found: 73 (HTML: 26, Broken Links: 47) Oops.
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8th June 2007: 'Jeremy' said:
Me too. I get 73 errors. Better than 159. But still leaves something to be desired. However I really don't think that any of this is important. The web site looks fine in my browser - isn't that all that counts? If you need an accessible version build one on a new URL and display a disabled badge with the link. All this regulation and compliance just makes trouble for hard working folk trying to earn a decent wage. Get a life!
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12th June 2007: 'Graeme' said:
Jeremy, accessibility isn't an optional 'add on', it's an intrinsic part of the user experience for all users regardless of capability. At the most basic level simply adhering to recognised industry standards will pretty much deliver an accessibile site and you then have no need for a separate "disabled site" with all the stigma that entails. (Tesco is now generally held up as an excellent example of this approach.) Accessibility is not mutually incompatible with engaging, attractive design and functionally rich sites. All it takes is an understanding of the barriers faced by users and how to apply industry standards. Hard working folk producing websites have nothing to fear from this and should instead see it as a way of raising their game (and their earning potential).
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8th June 2007: 'Graeme' said:
Forget validation errors. Well, not completely but don't get hung up on them to the extent of more glaring accessibility / usability issues with the site. A quick listen to the home page in JAWS reveals that: - the page that makes little sense when listened to serially
- the lack of meaningful heading structure (where's the H1, why all the H5's?)
- weird links (where exactly does "en" take you?)
- an image link with hugely verbose alt text
- image links prefixed with "click here" (gee, thanks for the tip) None of this makes the page inaccessible but it does place an unnecessary cognitive barrier between the user and the information. Aside from accessibility, it's odd that the site is almost anonymous. This could be because they've been working on the brand, but surely something large and distinctive in the masthead saying London 2012 woudn't have gone amiss?
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13th June 2007: 'Richard Morton' said:
A quick glance at the london2012 home page does throw up some usability/accessibility issues: As already pointed out, the main image on the page has a long alt description, which in my view is entirely unnecessary. It is a decorative image so alt="" would be fine. If the information in the alt text is important then why doesn't it appear on the page as text. Tabbing through navigation links doesn't change them in the same way as hovering over them does. This is a very common mistake and, dare I say it, applies to the it-director site as well. Most of the other links do nothing (other than change the mouse pointer) when hovered over, which is very much against the "don't make me think" usability school of thought, but more importantly is very difficult to use for someone who does not use a mouse and has even minor visual impairment. As mentioned before the use of headings is bad, and if "Current Tenders" is marked up as a heading, then why not "London 2012 images", "Quick Links" and others? Aside from all this, the page is not very inspiring considering the ethos and prestige of the event. "See the new London 2012 brand" just about sums it up. You can't see a brand, it is intangible and consists of far more than just a logo. I hate to be cynical but I'm guessing that the main olympic record Britain will get is the one for the biggest time and cost overrun. Hopefully they have 2013,2014 and 2015 logo up their sleeve "just in case".
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9th June 2007: 'Jason Bell' said:
Website accessibility is a fad. It will pass.
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9th June 2007: 'Duncan' said:
This is exactly the kind of ignorance we need to dispell. Accessibility in all walks of like is very important. No, it is NOT a fad. It is a very real and now legal requirement for web sites. I do, however, agree that petty validation errors are of little concern. Most applications produce appalling HTML code - it is not the designers fault. The software publishers need to sit up and take notice!
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12th June 2007: 'Graeme' said:
Quite. Since when has application of industry standards and best practice been a fad?
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11th August 2007: 'David Malcolm' said:
Peter, even before looking much further into it, I noticed that the site design breaks up in, given a bit quircky, Apple-Camino browser amplifying your comment about bad HTML making sites render less predictably.
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11th September 2007: 'Peter Abrahams' (Author) said:
Since I wrote this article the site has been completely revamped and is now accessible. It is worth looking at the accessibility page as a good example of what should be said and also as a statement of intent.
I will keep following the site and see how they deal with accessiblity of new technology as it is implemented.
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