According to Google’s TV Raman, their top two ‘accessible’ services are their main web search and the new Google labs accessible search. The rationale?

Web search: Result pages include headers to delineate logical sections

Right, that’s good and all, but it doesn’t really excuse the dozens of tables that have no summaries does it? And headers really don’t magically make a page accessible.

And as for the new Accessible search:

Accessible Search: Promotes results that are accessible.

I haven’t played with this search enough to see if it does promote accessible results (I’m sure it’s a good service), but again, Google’s own code is a mess. It’s better than the main Google search, but still has huge amounts of inaccessible code.

You should never claim your site is accessible. Code for it as much as you can, test it as much as you can and show you conform to WCAG, but never claim it’s ‘accessible’. And even if you do, at least make sure it passes some automated tests: unlike Google, who barely scrape in at Priority 1.

Channel 4′s 4oD was down last Friday night at 11:30pm. This really isn’t that surprising it was just after the latest episode of Peep Show had aired, and I imagine thousands of people over the UK were wanting to watch it after getting home that evening.

Thankfully it was up again on Saturday morning and I downloaded the new episode without a hitch. Of course until I tried to watch it around 12pm, when quite possibly everyone else burned the night before were attempting to download the episode yet again.

Now this is where DRM (and bad design on the developer’s part) really bugs me: the video file was on my hard drive somewhere in some mystical format and location, but without being able to connect to the 4oD site, I couldn’t watch it. Madness. Surely it’s easy enough to change the service so you can watch downloads offline, but if this was a torrent download (or any regular download) then this offline business wouldn’t even be an issue.

In similar news, the BBC’s iPlayer is coming later this year, apparently.

Manually entering dates is also frustrating as some part of the Javascript intermittently clears the field when changing focus between the fields. Initially I honestly couldn’t get a date in. I’ve since tried again and it worked (barely). Just as well there’s a fairly obvious Reservations link in the top bar.

By the way, anyone know of any good hotels in Calgary?

So I checked out the on-demand service yesterday after Angela had missed last night’s episode. I remember how easy it was catching up on Extras series two last year: just go to the BBC Two Extras site and click on ‘view latest episode’. Very easy.

Peep Show wasn’t quite that easy.

After having to run a Windows Update (which I do regularly anyway) and download some dubious looking DRM add-on for Windows Media Player, AND the latest .NET framework, I was then able to install the 4oD client (oh, after a reboot or two). After another step (signing up) I was able to download the episode. Finally.

To be fair the 4oD service looks quite promising: TV on demand as well as movies, but I’m really not sure about the whole process it takes to get it running. Sure it’s in its infancy, but the experience here really wasn’t particularly good. I’d tolerate a small install on my PC (emphasis on PC here: 4oD is purely Windows Media Player/IE-centric), but why is this service so desktop-focused? Back to the BBC example: I’m only ever a few clicks away from viewing a new episode of a new show. Sure 4oD does have some features to make up for the heavy install factor, such as download management and being able to ‘download for later’, but it’s simply so far away from the ‘seamless’ exercise I and many others have become used too with the likes of YouTube and Bittorrent.

But at the same time, I think it’s great Channel 4 has set this service up. They’re miles ahead of ITV and Five (who don’t appear to have any type of on demand service) and also the BBC when you consider the breadth of their offering: 4oD gives you access to the last weeks entire broadcast program for free. It will be interesting to compare 4oD to the BBC when they finally launch a service like this of their own, which will hopefully be far more platform independent.

However, as I said in the last post, I am still compelled to check Hotmail now and again as I still have a few emails of importance coming in between the far more steady stream of spam. Clearing my inbox today I noticed the Live Mail team have changed the way the inbox interface is laid out. The main difference is that the checkbox for each item now shares its place with the new mail icon:

Basically both icons toggle depending on whether the email is new and/or selected. In practice this is just really bemusing to use. If you want to select messages to delete or move, there is no obvious checkbox. When you work out they’re hiding between mail icons (emphasis on hidden here), the actual task of selecting the check boxes requires a high degree of accuracy: the checkbox is sitting on anchor block linking to the email message, so if you’re slightly off target with the small checkbox you end up opening a message as opposed to selecting it.

And my last gripe is that the checkbox/mail icon column doesn’t line up with the master select checkbox in the top left corner. There is actually room for the checkbox to sit next to the mail icon and be underneath this master selector. Wouldn’t that make far more sense?

I don’t know what the rationale behind the design of this is, but the caveat here is that this is a beta product after all. Although I made that point in my last blog entry as well, after pointing out Live Mail was purely IE6 (now IE7 as well). Windows Live Mail now loads in Firefox 2.0, although load is a pretty abstract concept:

24 errors/504 warnings? Nice.

And for the record, Live Mail is still long way off the simplicity and usability of Gmail.

Google Calender has finally been released to the public, and it looks very slick. But one surprise with it is that the developers behind it have actually created some valid HTML. Google Calendar even has a doctype! Perhaps the days of Google’s notoriously bad HTML is behind them.

Douglas Bowman was involved in the project, which may have had something to do with it. (Possible quote: "by the way guys, c’mon — your web apps are awesome but your HTML sucks!").

On the functionality side, I’m not sure how much impact Google Calendar will have until it synchs with handheld devices. I’m sure they’ll attempt this in the future, and then along with Gmail, Google might actually give the likes of Outlook a real run for its money. Outlook is hardly the be and end all of desktop communication and organisation — but even Doug Bowman sings Google Calendar’s praise over iCal, which is always getting praise from the Mac camp.

The WYSIWYG-style interface is of the usual high standard you’d expect from Google — AJAX rich and very easy to use. There are warnings about putting your email online (“Be careful. Remember that any time you include an email address on a web page, nasty spammers can find it too”) are nice — as are the encouragements to check links before you put them in.

I’m looking at these features from the point of view of what Google perceives its target customers to be: basic users who are making their first steps into web publishing. This may include those who may not know what a blog is, yet or how to share photos online, or those who just want to set up a good old fashioned ‘homepage’. However, with the boom in community-centric online services (Blogger, Myspace, Flickr) I’m really not seeing how this service is going to really impact in any serious way — unless Google has something else up its sleeves for this one.

…well-equipped to welcome visitors with disabilities. Our facilities include: lifts, wheelchair access, adapted toilets, and audio guides for selected exhibitions.

The irony of all this is that in the HTML version of the site (as opposed to the Flash) this text is rendered in a GIF with no alt text (and not considering the fact the site launches several pop-up windows). So unlucky if you’re visually impaired.

Or does this raise the question of whether you could truly appreciate a Design Museum if you were visually impaired? Or an art gallery? Or museums in general?

Regardless I do love the irony of disability services information appearing in probably the most inaccessible way possible.