Today the topic of full-on flash websites versus accessibility and search engine friendliness reared its ugly head in our office.
That old chestnut I hear you cry. The case against flashtastic websites, and a good one it is, was that they exclude users on many levels and are in no way pals with our spidery friends. Plus is it only us that are driven crazy by the double click flash now requires to fire it up?
The case for, which is still clearly prevalent see www.honda.co.uk or www.bryantparkhotel.com as examples (Editors note:- don’t waste your time if you are on dial-up, spend your time getting broadband, oops that’s nailed my colours to the mast). The verdict; yes Flash is exclusive and yes Flash is not SEO friendly but I believe good use of Flash outweighs these negatives and enables the addition of other dimensions to brand personality like mood and energy making the brand distinctive and attractive to the desired target audience.
Incidently whilst good practise says provide a non-Flash alternative, which is often a jpeg, I don’t think this really works either. And anyway when it comes to excluding users, call me old fashioned forget technology but aren’t brands themselves the biggest culprits. Brand Managers just call it targeting. I mean is The Bryant Park Hotel actually trying to attract your Aunt Edith to stay with them in the Big Apple. Don’t think so. Long live Flash! May your targeting of those who want a rich web experience prevail.
3 Comments
Targeting? Hmmmm.
Who’s to say that Aunty Edith does’t want to book a holiday for her grandson?
Also I think it is important to point out that physical and learning disablilities do not fall into to “targetted” demographics/markets because anybody from anywhere can suffer from impaired vision or mobility or any of the other 100s disabilities.
Young and trendy people interested in Bryant Park Hotel could also have a disability that makes it difficult for them to navigate a Flashtastic site.
However the debate should not be “black or white” or “either or” because it is possible to create a stunning flashtastic site that caters for the needs of everybody but it requires careful plannning and consideration.
It is about “Reasonable” adjustments to allow assistive technology to help disabled users to use the sites we create. Quite obviously we can’t do anything about the disability a user has but we should have no excuse for not building the accessibility features we can into the design.
I think the whole problem is educating people about accessibility on the web and understanding the different points of view but I think the key thing is for people to understand that accessibility does not = boring and dull and by the same token flastastic does not mean inaccessible.
A website can easily, if required, be both “flashtastic” and accessible if written properly; HTML versions of the websites can be made and can be loaded where flash is not usable.
20% of people in the UK are still on dial-up, and a good number (despite what BT claim) cannot get broadband, in other countries this number is even higher.
As Paul rightly said; you can easily make a well designed website and keep it accessible, it just takes a bit of thought and planning in the design stage and yes, it does require more work in the development stage; but I am a strong believer that accessible versions of websites DO work where required and why should people be left out because they have a disability or they can’t get ADSL?
Within the UK, since October 2004 all companies have been under a legal duty to make their premises as accessible as possible and can be prosecuted if they have found they haven’t, why shouldn’t this apply to websites too? And if it does end up applying then I think that a lot of companies may be in trouble.
Just when you’d think the flash or not to flash arguments would go away e-consultancy.com gets in on the act with a review of http://www.freedm2.com/
Its a really nice flash site full of great photography but as the CEO of e-consultancy says:
“Looking at Saatchi Interactive’s site it too is clearly Flash-dominated. And as a result you can’t find it on Google at all, and the few pages that are indexed by Google are from an older version of the site which was a modicum more accessible.
The message I’m hearing from advertising agencies is that they really don’t care about accessibility (or SEO).”
Basically whats the point in a flashy website that noone can find.