We finally launched the new website, after several people worked hundreds of hours to get it prepared. The reaction has been mixed at best. Most of those who have bothered to comment hate it, a few like it, many complain about the look or about the navigation. Some people even say they will boycott it. That's their privilege but I can't see how anyone could get so impassioned about a website.
One complaint that surfaces over and over again is that the former roll-over menus have disappeared. These were handy because you could see what information was on secondary pages without having to actually go to those pages. What the complainers perhaps don't realize is that those rollovers were rendering the site inaccessible for other users. The rollovers added convenience for some, at the expense of access for others - people with disabilities who rely on speech readers or other assistive technology.
The web should be accessible to all. That's how it started in 1992-1993 when Tim Berners-Lee first came up with the concept. It was a way to share information among people who might be using wildy different computers and operating systems. As the web developed, the artists, the geeks and the business people took over. Eye candy became the new religion. The latest flash technology, frames, animated gifs, wild backgrounds and crazy font colours were in. Browsers vied with one another for the latest gimmicks and usability, universality and most importantly, accessibility, fell by the wayside.
Inevitably reaction set in. People naturally gravitated towards sites that loaded quickly, that had useful information and were easy to navigate. Sites devoted to accessibility issues sprung up, and, with the assistance of legislation and regulations mandating accessibility for government-related sites, more attention is now paid to accessibility issues.
As the web becomes an increasingly important tool -- for finding information, for purchasing, for voting, for whatever, we have to keep in mind that the more we come to rely on it, the more important it is that we don't leave some people behind, whether because of disabilities, low bandwidth, reliance on public internet connections, or whatever.
So I'm happy to sacrifice a bit of convenience if it means greater accessibility for others. Gone are the days when a webmaster could get away with a message like this: "This website is designed to work best with Megacorp Browser 9.3 or greater. If you can't see the flashing doodads, then get a better browser."