Richard

UK

Voter

Hidden Messages?

My screen reader revealed hidden messages in the parties’ navigation bars:

On the Labour site, the separators between links looked like bars but read aloud as “bullets” – rather startling, post Hutton!

On the Lib-Dem site they also read aloud as “bullets.”

My screen reader doesn’t know Latin, so had problems reading “Veritas.” Their two-column layout was also unfriendly. My screen reader then startled me by reading “Support US” (as in USA)!

Accessibility:

The Conservative site offers a choice of font sizes and has good “alt text” in its images and button links. However its fonts are too small and respond badly when increased by the browser.

On the Lib-Dem site, when the font size was increased, the text overflowed from its containers and corrupted the page.

The page structure of the Labour site failed when the font size was enlarged. It also trapped my screen reader in a loop, endlessly repeating: “Tony’s Video Diary” and “Donate Now.”

The file sizes of these sites’ Home Pages were all too large for non-Broadband users. All pages worked well in both Internet Explorer and Firefox with my special adaptive style sheets.