RE: critique commercial site please

> http://www.cutlerpallets.com


"viewing" the site using a screen reader and IE version 5.0 in Windows 98

I had no problem navigating the site non-visually.

One thing that is confusing is that there are two "enter here" links which
lead to the same place.  Even if you are giving mouse users two places to
click, only one "alt" is necessary.  One says "enter" and the other "click
this image to enter."  For users who don't see the image, it would be better
to phrase it "click here to enter."  The other "aboutus'" link could just be
given alt=" ".

Also, I was confused by a graphic that was just labeled "1" at the bottom
and figured out it was the train.  It would be better either to label it
"image of a moving train" or nothing at all.  I think this was an oversight,
as you did a good job of disappearing other non-descriptive graphics.

Finally, I didn't go to all the pages, but looked at one that had a list of
available palates.  It was un-necessary to give text that said something
like "European style palate" and then put the same text in an alt tag for
the image.  What this does is simply to repeat the same text twice.  Either
use the alt-tag in the image to give more description of what this type of
palate looks like or, if only being marketed to people who already know
something about palates, just put a blank alt-tag on the image and you are
left with a list of the palate types.  Thinking about it a little more, I
think I myself might have a need sometime in my life to buy a palate and
better descriptions of the images would be helpful - how does the European
style differ from the others, etc.  This would help anyone not viewing the
graphics.

Lynn Zelvin
lzelvin(at)concentric.net
www.pond.com/~lzelvin

HTML: hwg-critique mailing list archives, maintained by Webmaster @ IWA