Toyota and An Post

— Published January 11th, 2003  |  by David Moore

Ireland is hosting the 2003 Special Olympics, and it's positive to see the calibre of sponsors the Special Olympics have attracted. Both An Post and Toyota have lent their support to the games, with their logos prominently displayed on the Special Olympics site [http://www.2003specialolympics.com/].

However, if any of the athletes from the games were browsing these sponsors' Irish sites, they might feel somewhat less supported. Our analyses reveal that neither the An Post nor the Toyota Ireland sites meet the minimum W3C standards for accessibility.

The main problems with the Toyota Ireland site [http://www.toyota.ie]:

• The absence of alt text for images, which makes the site meaningless and frustrating to blind users
• The site uses frames, which present significant difficulties to blind and visually impaired users who rely on screen reader technology. The problem is exacerbated by the frames being improperly titled.
• The site cannot be accessed by people who have difficulty using a mouse.
• It is impossible for visually impaired users to increase the size of the text used on the site.
• In addition large parts of the site (both in terms of content and navigation) are delivered in Flash, with no alternatives offered in a more accessible format.

The An Post site [http://www.anpost.ie/] fares little better:

• Alternative text is not provided for images
• Hyperlinks do not have titles, which makes it impossible for screen reader users to learn the destination of a link before selecting it.
• Important functionality is not available to users who cannot use a mouse.

The mismatch between the laudable involvement of Toyota and An Post in the Special Olympics and their own sites' parlous accessibility suggests they are more interested in looking good than being good.

Related Links:

• Special Olympics 2003 - [http://www.2003specialolympics.com/]
• Toyota Ireland - [http://www.toyota.ie]
• An Post - [http://www.anpost.ie/]