Unintentionally Blank

Phil Nash on the Internet, Web Standards and Accessibility

A Further Look Into The BBC's New Homepage

Mar 26, 2008

by Phil Nash

Just a couple of weeks ago I marvelled at the BBC's new, accessible, dynamic homepage. Yesterday, Jonathan Hassell took us a bit deeper into the processes that BBC went through in order to produce such a well turned out page.

It is well worth a read just to find out about the extent of the testing that the team went through. Most developers would test their sites on Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and perhaps Opera, the BBC comissioned AbilityNet to test on screenreaders Jaws, Hal, Window-Eyes, Thunder and WebbIE, all the while paying attention to other disabilities for example:

[W]e ensured that font sizes and the use of colour met our Accessibility Standards & Guidelines, and that links were not too spaced out (for screen-magnifier users), too close together or too small (for those with motor impairments).

Again, I'd like to say that I was impressed with the redesign, inside and out, and will be more than interested to see the design and the functionality spread through the rest of the site. I'm sure there is a whole load of hard work going on behind the scenes with further testing and investigation over how this may affect the rest of the site, but in the end it will all be worth it, the BBC will not only be the hub that it already is, but it will be more usable and accessible for all and a pillar on the web for web standards and accessibility.

Unintentionally Blank is Phil Nash's thoughts on web development from 2006-2008. Any code or opinions may be out of date.