Critical appeal
While the two online campaign managers resisted taking outright shots at each other's sites, some outsiders have not been as forgiving. Bruce Tempkin, analyst at Forrester Research, has identified major flaws in both candidates' online offerings. Tempkin criticised the two campaigns for failing to meet established standards of site design, access for disabled people and even assuring users' privacy.
Tempkin says both campaigns' pages were tough to navigate and hard to read. According to the analyst's methodology, the Bush and Kerry sites do not meet well-established standards in Web design.
The Bush-Cheney site's major navigational elements -- the left-hand navigation bar and the tabs near the top of the page -- use fonts that appear to be only 7 point," Tempkin says. "The 'latest headlines' listed in the middle of the home page are only slightly larger. At the top of the page, the texts in the links are nearly microscopic. And each of the pages under the main tabs present links to the latest content using red text on a bluish background, a verboten combination."
Kerry's site also scored poorly on design.
"The Kerry site also uses very small fonts (about 7.5 point) for its left- hand navigation bar, combined with a low-contrast blue-on-blue colour scheme," Tempkin wrote. "The options at the top of the home page aren't much bigger. Most of the rest of the home page suffers from a combination of small fonts and poor colour contrast -- including light blue text on white, and grey on light blue. And when users try to make a contribution, they're greeted with a page full of 7.5-point-font instructions."
Tempkin gave both sites failing grades in regard to meeting the needs of disabled users. He pointed out that the Bush-Cheney home page uses tabs small enough to make it difficult for physically impaired users to align a mouse on the correct links. On Kerry's site, the left-hand navigation bar requires users to place their mouse directly over a tiny target -- text in a very small font -- once again challenging impaired Web surfers.
Similarly vexing is the two sites' failure in terms of protecting users' privacy. According to Tempkin, the privacy policy on GeorgeWBush.com is virtually hidden, and though a link to the policy exists on all pages, he contends many users would likely miss it. He says that when the site collects personal information, such as when a visitor signs up for email alerts, it does not provide a prominent link to the privacy policy in context.
The analyst says JohnKerry.com does a better job of displaying its privacy policy than the Bush site, following de facto standards by providing a link to the policy at the bottom of its pages. But when the site collects personal information for email alerts or contributions it also fails to provide a more prominent link to the privacy policy specifically for that action.
