Trashing Ready.gov and other blog sports

The Ready.gov "safety" icons are scary, but the fact that a federal site is not accessible is even more scary.

Take a look at this page featuring lovely chemical warfare infographics. If you try to click on the "next >" choice, nothing happens. A closer look reveals that the link is a javascript link to nowhere. This is a usability and accessibility gaffe.

Just turn the text off. How hard is that?

Update: The javascript link is gone from the "next >" on the last page, but that still begs the question: why even show the "next >" option on the last page? And why is "next" lowercase?

Posted by Chad Lundgren on Friday, February 28, 2003 (Link)

Comments

Posted by Another ready.gov parody Monday, March 3, 2003 at 04:44 AM

Another ready.gov parody

Comment from another site:

Posted by Joshua Kaufman Monday, March 3, 2003 at 10:18 AM Chad Lundgren's latest entry got me thinking about user context and navigation within articles. The Ready.gov page is a great... Read more in User Context and Navigation in Articles »

Posted by Shannon Monday, March 3, 2003 at 10:19 AM

Why wouldn't be lower case? Just wondering.

The link problem seems to be more of a template problem. The page won't go to "next" because this is the last image in the series. There is also a link that goes nowhere at the beginning of the series. Apparently they were too lazy to remove these from the template they used for all the pages.

They should have replaced them with links to the homepage, or something useful.

I guess they don't have a whole lot of resources to make their web pages perfect while also planning a war.

Posted by Chad Lundgren Tuesday, March 4, 2003 at 10:08 PM

People that use all lower case don't understand that it was only cool when e.e. cummings did it.

Posted by Shannon Wednesday, March 5, 2003 at 12:05 PM

Well, I seem to have something against typing the word 'it,' so who am I to speak?

I think I'll call it evolution.

Posted by Chris Overstreet Tuesday, March 25, 2003 at 11:32 AM

Well, we stole their design, bad links and all. It's a case of imitation being the insincerest form of flattery.

http://www.ducttapeandbalingwire.com