A Manuafactoring company in this area (N. Carolina)is a very big supporter of the local community. Chamber of Commerce, Civic clubs, etc., and has a strong policy to always buy locally if possible. They recently were looking to purchase screen printed T-Shirts & sweat shirts for employees. This turned out to be a $50,000.00+ purchase. (Over 1500 employees)
Being a "High - Tech" company they hit the WWW to find a vendor and gather bids. They actually found a "local" company that did screen printing and had a web site, so they purchasing agent typed in the URL and arrived at the site. The opening page text stated the company had a large variety and could supply most needs. The opening page also invited visitors to "come in" and browse their offerings. Only problem - there was no navigation, none, no buttons, no text links nothing! So the purchasing agent continued his quest and placed an order with another company (still in NC, but across the state). Seems the manufactoring company uses a firewal to strip all Java, JavaScript and any non ASCII files from the HTTP headers of any web sites accessed from the corporate network (BTW, this is not at all unusual).

End of story? Nope! It seems the owner of the screen printing company and a member of the board of the manufactoring company met and the screen printing company owner inquired about why they bought their shirts from some one else. Now the whole story came out and the screen printing company is suing the web designer, because his contract states the web site "... will accessable to the global market place."
No telling how this will turn out, but thought you all would find it interesting to say the least....

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Gil Harvey
"No one is listening until you make a mistake"
Old Hippy Productions, Inc.
Developers check here for Authorize.net Accounts

More than anything, it's a lesson in how important it is to a) have a contract and b) have a contract with a very strong discalimer... I've found customers are comfortable with this as long as you explain what you're idemnifying yourself against.

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You! Off my planet!
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quote:

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Originally posted by DarlingBri:
It's a bummer for the t-shirt company, but I'd say the web designer was in the right. After all, aren't pages in Japanese accessible to the global market place? You bet... if you've got a browser that reads Japanese.

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Well, actually the designer was not in the right - the problem wasn't a language one, it was invalid HTML. Japanese pages may or may not be accessible, depending on if the code is correct. Depending on graphic navigation and not providing text navigation for those with images turned off, using frames [AGH!!!] and having "Your browser doesn't support frames" in the NoFrames tag, relying on a Java Applet for important information, etc., are mistakes we see every day. I currently consult to 5 medium to large companies (over 100 computers with an Internet connection) and none of them allow Java, JavaScript or any multimedia files through the firewall. Two of these companies have large engineering departments and those engineers use UNIX or Linux machines and browse with Lynx.

BTW, I think the design firm settled out of court, but I do not know for how much.

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Gil Harvey
"Follow your dream! Unless it's the one where you're at work in your underwear during a fire drill."
Old Hippy Productions, Inc.
Developers check here for Authorize.net Accounts

It's amazing how many big design firms out there are skipping a major design element!

- Linda

quote:

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Originally posted by LB:
Ever since this original post, I have noticed MANY "professional" and "corporate" sites that would never be able to be seen without graphics and/or javascript.
It's amazing how many big design firms out there are skipping a major design element!

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It really is amazing, Linda, but a lot of the sites we see are a site designed for our browser. Most of the big professional design house are designing three (or more?) sites and using browser detection to send a visitor to the right one. I've gone to a lot of sites and had the same initial impression, then gone back with NN3, no JS, no images and be presented with a different site that was accessable and had all the content. Maybe someday MS & Netscape will adhere to the W3C standards - I can dream can't I?

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Gil Harvey
"Follow your dream! Unless it's the one where you're at work in your underwear during a fire drill."
Old Hippy Productions, Inc.
Developers check here for Authorize.net Accounts

- Linda