Bord Glas - Worth the award?

— Published December 1st, 2003  |  by David Moore

Bord Glas recently won the Public Sector Times' national best e-government website award for 2003, so visitors to the site [http://www.bordglas.ie] would be forgiven for expecting quality throughout and examples of best-practice.

They will be disappointed. It's not a bad site, containing a depth of information, a clear structure and lots of fresh content. But its lack of attention to detail - especially with regard to provision for users with disabilities - makes you wonder how it was selected.

On the homepage, the 1997-style animated gifs distract users, and two links are both labelled 'Click here', perhaps to clear up confusion from links not being underlined. As users tend to scan pages before reading them, underlined links stand out as pointers to where they can go, and so they should clearly describe their destination. If you can't tell it's a link from looking at it, putting 'Click here' beside it doesn't really help.

The range of content is not presented in the most useful way - in the Publications section, for example, headings point to .pdf files with no summary or file size information. The title of a publication might not give visitors enough information to know if it's appropriate for them, or they may be reluctant to start downloading a large .pdf if they're on a slow connnection. Since the content of Acrobat files cannot easily be indexed by the site's search feature, a summary also helps visitors locate the material they're looking for. Material in the News and Fact Sheets areas would also benefit from summaries.

A few typos also niggle; for example: "Strawberries are usually eaten raw, they can also be stewed or pulped for sauces, mouses and jams." Shouldn't that be 'mousses' (or 'mice')?

But it's the accessibility failings that are particularly surprising, given the obligations that public sector sites are under in this regard. The seasonal availability chart is one large graphic (without Alt tags), making it entirely useless for some visitors with disabilities. (The printer-friendly version of the chart turns out to be a Word document, although there's no warning of this before you launch the file).

Even where Alt tags are used, they have not been applied to best effect. In the Fruit section, a map shows where fruit is produced, highlighting the east and south of the country. The Alt tag for the map reads: 'Areas where fruit is grown in Ireland', but you still need to be able to see the map to see which areas are referred to.

These criticisms may sound like nitpicking, and the Bord Glas site is well-maintained and useful. We're just not sure it's so good that it deserves the award for the best e-government site in the country.

Related Links:

• Bord Glas - [http://www.bordglas.ie]