Comments on: Metservice NZ web accessibility review

By: Rico

Rico — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 21:20:29 +0000

The horizontal scrollbar has been implemented—now I can scroll to the right to reveal a large grey box obscuring the Weather Warnings.

By: Graham Oliver

Graham Oliver — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:35:56 +0000

Other comments here
http://www.aardvarkforums.co.nz/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2983

By: Phil

Phil — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 21:54:25 +0000

Unfortunately the weather pages are completely useless without javascript, which is another serious mark against the new design. This is most likely more than just a tweak to resolve (it’s much easier to build sites with “unobtrusive javascript” if that is your intention from the start), but if it’s not going to happen this time, then hopefully the met service will at least keep this in mind the next time they overhaul the site.

By: Phil

Phil — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 21:35:44 +0000

Ensuring that a scroll-bar is available for over-flow is critical, of course. That said, I can’t help also pointing out that if you are trying to increase the font size and your browser is ‘zooming’ the entire page rather than just the text, then you need to either change browsers or find an option to prevent that from happening. Firefox 3 has a View -> Zoom -> Zoom Text Only option (that this option is off by default is most unfortunate). Google Chrome is horribly deficient, and has no such option. I recommend either not using Chrome, or ensuring that you have a friendlier browser at hand in which to view problematic pages. Firefox 3 remembers the font size I last viewed a site at, which gets it additional bonus points from me.

By: Robyn

Robyn — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 04:17:42 +0000

Thanks Nicola for a positive response. I haven’t really noticed much change in the text shading. The blog is still too faint.
Glad you are doing something about the download as it makes my poor old desk top rev up like a jet taking off into the teeth of a stiff northerly! And I’m on city broadband.
Can you do anything about the slider for the ten day forecast?
If you want a fuller review www,accEase.com could do one for you.
Cheers
Robyn

By: Nicola Burroughs

Nicola Burroughs — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 02:39:05 +0000

Thank you for your comments and observations on the new look metservice.com. These are appreciated as MetService are currently still tweaking aspects of the site in response to feedback.

We have reduced the page size of the majority of pages to make this faster to load and easier for people on dial-up modems. There are a lot of farmers (on dial-up modems) who visit metservice.com, so this was a priority from the beginning of the project.

Last week, shortly after the release of the website we adjusted the font colour on some pages where a lighter grey was used to a darker grey shade. Please advise us if this is still difficult to read.

The old MetService website relied on mouse hovering for the five day forecast text. We have displayed this on the new website without the hover feature – although admit the text is quite small to fit the required space.

Tomorrow we are looking to add a horizontal scroll bar so you will be able to access the warnings on the right hand side of the page when the page is zoomed in.

We will also be releasing amendments to the map colours on the rural section in the coming weeks.

Due to your comments we will also look at the page layout when increasing the font size.

Any further feedback is invited at feedback@metservice.com.