Pretty in pink? Not quite.
Ruhi Tewari -
Monday, September 07, 2009 5:45 PM
The new Rajya Sabha website (http://www.rajyasabha.nic.in/), launched a couple of months back (30 July to be precise), decided to go all pink instead of its previous white and blue avtaar. A noble attempt at adding a dash of colour and cheer to the otherwise monotonous nature (to some) of the site.
However, despite its rejuvenated look, some issues with the website immediately crop up. A website should be user friendly and easy to navigate.
To begin with, you have to be extremely deft with your mouse maneuvering if you want to go from one link into sub-links. Using the revamped Rajya Sabha website is like playing a video game, not only do you have to be deft with your fingers and have excellent hand-eye co ordination, you also need to know where to find the clues to get to the information that you want. For example, you have to go through three levels of menus to get to the list of questions.
More importantly, the site came under the scanner last week for being "inaccessible to the visually impaired". According to the National Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disabled People or NCPEDP, an initial testing (carried out by BarrierBreak technologies) of the website reveals that inaccessibility issues make it difficult for the visually impaired to access information posted on the website. This, despite, new web access guidelines that require sites to be web content access guidelines compliant.
According to NCPEDP, some of the problems with the website are inappropriate alternate texts, missing heading structure, no means to control moving content, missing form labels etc.
Thus, even while NIC made an attempt to give the Rajya Sabha website an all new look and a more vibrant feel, there were obviously crucial designing issues that were perhaps not considered while re-designing it.
However, with all the feedback and complaints, the site would hopefully be altered to fix these issues, even while maintaining the pink and red feel. Else, we just have to be content with using it as a way to better our video game playing techniques