February 14, 2006

U.S. Grant Web Site Doesn’t Work With Macs

this article.

First, unless I’m mistaken, all web sites that are funded even partially with government money are required to adhere to accessibility guidelines (Section 508 of… ADA standards? Something like that?). I can only assume from this article that grants.gov is not concerned about folks with accessibility issues that use Macs.

Second, I thought we were through with the Microsoftization of the Internet. Didn’t we go through this a few years ago? Have folks simply forgotten? Do folks really not care about the large percentage of potential customers (and, in the case of grants.gov, tax paying citizens) who don’t use Windows?

I’ve been noticing a growing trend among our more clueless, focus group driven web entities to move everything to Microsoft technology. Not only audio, mind you, but video as well. A few years back I could get both in formats that worked just fine on non-Windows machines. Nowadays, every other site uses Windows Media with DRM for their video and some music services use the same for audio. There is no Windows Media Player for Macs that includes Microsoft’s DRM technology. What a surprise, huh?

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p> Let’s fill the entire Internet with Microsoft SQL server error screens, unviewable video, audio that won’t play for any but a select group of potential customers, and inaccessible web sites. Wouldn’t that be special?]]>

...filed under "Uncategorized" @ 2:27 pm

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