Brian Sweeting

Phil Windley gives the Salt Lake County Recorders Office website an “F” grade for accessibility. Apparently the site requires all visitors to use Internet Explorer 5.5 and up. The site doesn’t try to be nice about it by saying the all so common “This site is best viewed with [insert browser name here].” It just redirects you to a page that directs you to download IE. I think it is pretty absurd to assume that owho wants to use your website will not only download a new browser to do so, but also switch operating systems as well, since IE 5.5+ is only available to Microsoft Windows users.

Other than a dhtml top navigation menu, I can’t see what would warrant such a decision. Now if that was the deciding factor, I could recommend at least a hundred different cross-browser compatible dhtml menu scripts they could use. If more government agencies would pay more attention to web standards and less attention to whizbang menus or other non-cross browser code, they could make their sites more accessible, not only to multiple browsers and platforms, but also to multiple devices including PDA’s and screen readers for the disabled. But they feel like they are depriving their users of some invaluable experience that can only be supplied by IE.