Developed by Enterprise Ireland in association with the Irish Software Association (ISA), Stanford Graduate School of Business is delivering a prestigious programme in the US and Ireland.

According to the Enterprise Ireland Web site

The Growth programme, which offers Irish high-growth company CEOs an opportunity to enhance their ambition, mindset and world class leadership capabilities was launched in October 2006.

I don’t recognize one name on the list of attendees. I’m not saying they don’t deserve to be there. I’m sure they do. I’m just highlighting the fact that not only are the CEOs who I think have potential not on the list, they’re probably not aware of the initiative.

Moreover, I didn’t even know it existed and I’ve been previously invited to present to MBA students in the UK.

Can someone from Enterprise Ireland or the Irish Software Association please publish how they choose the CEOs? I’d like to know what the success criterion was/is.

If you’re a CEO in Ireland, did you know about this initiative? Do you know someone on the list?

Why can’t Enterprise Ireland make it easy for its clients to keep up to speed on the work it’s doing? Why do we have to stumble upon a Web page by accident or hear about an initiative along the grapevine because one or two individuals go out of their way to search and discover.

I’m meeting with Enterprise Ireland before Christmas. It will either be the very last time I meet them, or it’ll be 100 times more productive than I expect based on my past experience with them. As far as I’m concerned, they’re in the last chance saloon.

Source Fergus Burns

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John Burns’ response to a disgruntled recipient should have been an apology. Instead, he stupidly wrote

These email addresses are part of a networking list from www.itcork.ie and are all available for everyone to see.

I do appreciate your concern chris, (i will keep my eye out for the bloggers!!!)

This is a guy who clearly doesn’t understand the data protection act. He also doesn’t understand that what he did was simply bad practice and dumb.

I regularly get spam from recruitment agencies. It doesn’t actually bother me but it does add weight to my argument for not using them. I’ve got vast experience on both sides of the fence in terms of being a client and candidate. Generally speaking (in my experience) they’re unprofessional and back stabbing at best. On the rare occasion, I ran into a great bunch of people such as those at PriceJamieson, but this doesn’t happen often.

Disclaimer Ann Jamieson is the founder of PriceJamieson and is a member BIMA’s Advisory Committee, which I Chair. This in no way had any influence on my tone used throughout this blog post.

So, if you work for a recruitment agency and come by this site to harvest contact details, don’t bother because you’ll only end up in the bin where you belong.

Origin Tom Raftery’s blog.

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I was first prompted to write this post when one of Segala’s Certified Partners directed me to their ‘blog’. I can’t remember why, I think it was regarding the design and it was asking us to review it for accessibility standards compliance.

I was bemused when I was unable to converse with the author by leaving a comment. It wasn’t the first time I witnessed this, but it was the first time it (almost) frustrated me. All I could think of was ‘why?’ Why not just call it a Personal Web site?!

A few weeks later a Microsoft colleague directed me to the same agency’s white paper on Web 2.0 as he found it very interesting. So, here’s an agency that clearly understands Web 2.0 but yet, wasn’t sure whether to enable comments on its ‘blog’ or not. I was delighted to see comments later enabled as a direct result of my personal feedback on the subject though.

Personal Web sites have been around for a very long time. Running commentary on subjects such as movies and sport isn’t a good enough reason to call your Web site a blog.

As Wikipedia states

A blog (a portmanteau of web log) is a website where entries are written in chronological order and commonly displayed in reverse chronological order. “Blog” can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.

Blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject such as food, politics, or local news; some function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual, although some focus on art (artlog), photographs (photoblog), sketchblog, videos (vlog), music (MP3 blog), audio (podcasting) or sexual topics (Adult blog), and are part of a wider network of social media.

The bit that interests me most is, “The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs.”

Calling a Web site which allows two-way conversations a blog, is a way of benchmarking time, technology and/or techniques. The very same can be said for Web 2.0. Although, Web 2.0 principles have been around longer than the term itself, Web 2.0 enables us to talk about the same stuff, well, sort of. Most of the confusion in my opinion, appears to be around whether people are talking about technology or marketing.

One could argue that if your comment is worthy enough, it should in fact warrant its own post on your own blog, thereby mitigating the need for comments in the first place. However, this is a cop out and doesn’t counter my argument to use the term ‘blog’ when referring to Web sites that enable comments from readers.

Sethi Godin, Dave Winer and Russell Beattie are just 3 people who call their Personal Web sites blogs. Perhaps people like Winer can get away with it as people are very likely to write posts on their own blogs and then link back to his original article.

Perhaps a few people should be given a ‘get out of jail free’ card? Can they get away with being an exception to the rule?

For me, ‘blog’s without comments is just evil 99.9% of the time. There must be a very good reason not to have comments on a full time basis.

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Looks like Hosting365 customer and technical support isn’t alone at the bottom of the pit. Technorati is probably the worst I’ve seen yet. Actually that’s not true, it’s the second worst as nobody could be as bad as Hosting365.

Long story short; I’ve lost my login details to Technorati. I tried to have them emailed to me via their Web site, but the site wasn’t working properly. These things happen so I’m not complaining about the site not working. So, I filled in their form informing them of the problem (i.e. their Web site wouldn’t allow me to apply for a new password). I was absolutely amazed by the automated email response.

Dear Technorati User,

Thank you so much for taking the time to drop us a line. If you are reporting a problem you may be having you will be contacted by a support technician once we have had a chance to review your message.

If you don’t hear back from anyone within a week, please accept our apologies for the delay as we may be experiencing a backlog in Support. [snip]

Am I wrong in thinking that of all companies, an ‘Internet’ based company should understand the importance of speed when it comes to customer support response times? I know AOL has had some knocks in recent years but when I was there during the mid 90′s the technical support was second to none (I’m not saying it was because of me). They had chat rooms that enabled users to connect within minutes and have direct access to a support person who was both friendly and helpful. That is of course assuming they weren’t experiencing a connection problem

12 years later, not only is Technorati an Internet based company, it’s a blog-type company which should understand better than anyone, the importance of immediate responses. 24 hours is pretty slow for this type of company but a week?!!! That’s just not good enough. They don’t even guarantee a response within a week. In fact, judging by their email, I’d say they’re assuming it’ll take more than that.

Perhaps they really do only care about the success of Microformats, something I’ve been concerned about for sometime.

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I’m very sorry for inflicting Robert Loch upon you like this. I should have given prior warning. The picture was taken on our way back to the UK after Curry 2.0, where Rob gave his pitch about a new idea called Jokaoke (a bit like karaoke but for people who really can’t sing, rather than pretend they can’t before getting up and singing like a pro).

What started as an idea to entertain a few people over dinner, turned out to be a successful ‘networking event’ crammed with cool people who between them, traveled a few thousand miles to take part in some idle banter over a curry and glass of wine. We had folk fly in from the UK, Spain and the People’s Republic of Cork. My sincere thanks goes to everyone who attended but a special thanks is extended to those who collected air miles just for a curry (Jaipur only delivers within a 500 mile radius, sorry).

Left to right, Paul Walsh and Farzad Jamal.

I started the evening with a few games of pool with Dennis Howlett, Robert Loch and Farzad Jamal. I won, naturally.

We then moved onto Jaipur where we were greeted with some of the delights of Stormhoek wine. Whilst getting familiar with their surroundings, everyone sipped the only Rose wine specifically made to serve over Ice. Full fruity style, yet dry on the finish when served over ice, Stormhoek’s Couture Rose 2007 was a fresh start to the evening. It was also the beginning of my steady decline into a slightly inebriated state. For which I am (almost) sorry given that it’s captured on video thanks to Paul Campbell. I refuse to watch any video footage of myself so feel free no to comment on my performance

I introduced the evening’s entertainment as just that, entertainment; a time to sit back, relax and enjoy good food, wine and company. As the evening pressed ahead we got to taste more of Stormhoek’s offerings, which I may add, isn’t bad at all. The Sauvignon Blanc was my personal favourite. I won’t pretend to know anything about wine. I simply know what I like and dislike. I leave all that stuff to my restaurateur business partner Asheesh (oops, just realised we haven’t included a profile for him on the site!).

I’m hoping this will be the first of many similar events in Dublin (and other parts of Ireland should anyone wish to use the term Curry 2.0).

Left to right, Christ Smith Paul Walsh and Dan Teodosiu.

I spent some time chatting with Dan Teodosiu, Microsoft Director, Windows Live Europe. Very cool guy. He now wants to host some events at the Microsoft office. So, please leave a comment if you have any suggestions. Perhaps we could do something with the Blue Monster.

I didn’t hear this from Dan himself but Farzad filled me in on a (not-so) funny story. Apparently Dan went to college with Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. The sore point is that Dan was offered a job which would have made him employee number 3! How sorry is he for not accepting that job offer. He’s not doing too badly though, as he sold his venture in the Valley to Microsoft and is now heading up Live. I look forward to working with him on a future event, or two.

Left to right, Paul Walsh and Brian Caulfield.

I’m pretty confident our worthy waiter purposely absconded just before the pitching session started. So, who better to replace our 100 meter sprinter than Sanjay, Head Chef. Brian Caulfield of Trinity Venture Capital was my independent adjudicator. It took Sanjay no time at all to decide that James Kennedy of SmartNote was the easiest pitch to understand. I don’t have a video clip of this particular pitch to hand so I’ll write a separate post and explain why I personally feel he deserved his place on the podium.

First up on the pitching session is a buddy of mine, Philip Wilkinson, Founder of Crowdstorm. This was a little different because Philip previously recorded a video clip especially for the occasion, which I ran on a laptop connected to some loud speakers.

It was good to have Maxim Kelly, Business Reporter for the Sunday Tribune (the first Irish newspaper to write something about me) at the table. I put Maxim on the spot by introducing him as one of the pitching companies. I love doing stuff like that. He did a fantastic job given that he had less than 5 seconds to prepare. I think I said something like ‘so, why should we read the Tribune Max?’ to which he had no choice but to respond.

Not only did Chris Smith from Stormhoek provide the wine for the evening, he also flew over from the UK to team up with Julian Alubaidy,from Bubble Brothers. It was good to get a pitch from Chris as it gave him the opportunity to further promote the brand. So Julian, what date are you launching Stormhoek in Ireland so we can start to stock it in Jaipur?

I spoke to Hugh MacLeod on the phone this morning and he has kindly agreed to sponsor the wine at a new event that Robert Loch and I am running (email me if you want to be invited, it’s invite only).

We even got a pitch from Dan Stevenson from Microsoft. I think this was a nice touch because it’s not exactly a startup. It does however, demonstrated how Microsoftians can hang out in the same playground with the rest of the kids.

I won’t run a commentary on each pitch. You can see them for yourself below thanks to Paul Campbell. The picture and sound quality isn’t great but I think that only adds to the character of the evening and demonstrates how impromptu it was. I’ll write a separate post which will include the winning pitch.
Thanks to Dennis Howlett for the pictures

It’s not actually Ben Childers pitching for Microsoft as it states on the YouTube video, it’s Dan Stevenson.

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Yes it may be true that 80% of computer user’s desktops are one way or another dominated by Microsoft, but when it comes to the Web, Microsoft’s plays a leading lady role at best. Perhaps going after Adobe’s biggest success “Flash”, is just a sign of Microsoft’s preparation for a Web domination campaign. Anyway “Silverlight”, is a browser plugin that will allow Web content providers/publishers to offer rich video and interactive media experiences directly within their Web sites. Wondering which browser? According to an official statement issued by Microsoft (unable to find the resource at the time of writing this post), Silverlight will be compatible with Internet explorer, Firefox and Opera initially.

Silverlight, formerly code-named WPF/E uses the same technology which leverages Vista’s new graphics framework Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). As you can guess, Microsoft’s key target audience/consumer group are content providers that want to distribute video and rich media over the Web, designers and developers who build rich media content or applications and last but not the least, end users. Until now almost all of the news sites like Cnet, ZDnet, Reuter’s etc. use Adobe’s Flash as the key technology to show interactive media/content. Microsoft’s Silverlight objective is to take away that dominance. Obviously Silverlight has the good looks and an abundance of creativity enrichment.

The coolest part of “Silverlight” is that it delivers a similar user experience on both IE 7 running on Windows Vista and Firefox running on an Apple Mac computer. This means it is OS independent (cross-platform) and more importantly, end users will not have to download different video player technologies to view online media based on what OS they are running. Well that is one feature that Adobe Flash doesn’t have.

Here are some of the cool features of Silverlight

• It supports playback of WMV files on both PC and Macintosh.
• Silverlight and HTML integrate seamlessly together. Every XAML element can be accessed or manipulated from the same client-side JavaScript that would be used to interact with any DHTML element: there are no artificial boundaries or barriers, and you can even overlay HTML elements on top of Silverlight content (simply by creating a windowless frame).
• Full runtime interactivity with Silverlight generated content. The content of the XAML file can be completely server-side generated.
• Silverlight is blindingly fast – trust me it is. You just go and play the same video with Flash and Silverlight and you will see.
• Silverlight is almost 100% upward compatible with WPF. Animation, 2D vector graphics, media, text.
• This one is the coolest of all: Simple integration with existing Web technologies and assets means Silverlight works with any back-end Web environment or technology. No “rip and replace” required. Silverlight integrates with your existing infrastructure and applications, including Apache, PHP, as well as JavaScript and XHTML on the client.

There was no indication if “Silverlight” will be able to eliminate the key accessibility issue of Flash objects that is to say the lack of device independent navigation. In Adobe Flash created objects, you can bring good looks, but you can’t bring device independent navigation/control, you need a mouse for that. I’m hoping they have an answer for this. We’ll just have to want and see the final product.

Microsoft delivered a beta of Silverlight at its MIX 2007 conference at the end of April. So have your fingers crossed and wait to see the battle of rich media content generators .

Perhaps our friends at mydeo can tell us more.

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A much needed ecosystem to enable better collaboration is starting to form in London, with people like Saul Klein kicking off initiatives such as OpenCoffee, Robert Loch and Paul Birch running (compelling) Internet People and informal gatherings for Creative People (supported by me from a BIMA perspective) and Sam Sethi running mashup events. And these are just a few of the networking opportunities that attract an average of 80 likeminded opportunists on a regular basis. Then you have intimate and private breakfast meetings which I’ve attended, along with people such as Paul Birch, Robert Loch, Olly Barrett, Saul Campbell, Judy Gibbons, Judith Clegg, Michael Smith, Saul Campbell, Sam Sethi, Daniel Appelquist and more.

Sam wrote a very interesting post that grabbed the attention of some of the UK’s finest investors recently, most notably Doug Richards, one of the originals from Dragon’s Den. Sam articulated what I’ve been thinking about for a while – about the disconnect between investors, brands that can make a difference such as BT and Microsoft, government initiatives and entrepreneurs.

I was interested in the debate it sparked. Each investor articulated their involvement in various initiatives, all of which were unknown to me personally. That’s not to say they’re not compelling and very worthwhile, but it does highlight the necessity for each community to collaborate and not just each person in each community.

During the exchange of comments on Sam’s post, I raised the question about working with government bodies to seek more support to help build the foundation of such an ecosystem. There were no takers and only Robert suggested something similar.

Whilst Enterprise Ireland does very little, the Irish government has decided to roll out free WiFi access across Dublin city. This is the type of stuff that’s needed, but much more needs to happen if budding entrepreneurs are to, well, blossom. Unlike the dragons, I wouldn’t necessarily expect an inventor to have the business acumen to realise the full potential of their product – you can’t be good at everything.

So, whilst I believe entrepreneurs have the ability to sell, that doesn’t mean they have the time to fill in application forms for innovation type competitions to ensure they end up on the radar of people who count, nor are they likely to have time/money to spend on PR firms to do it for them. Congratulations to Nooked though, they deserved to be on the list! I believe the rest of the value chain should seek and discover such talent and help them realise their full potential. It’s not just about the money; it’s about building an ecosystem where better collaboration can take place.

I work with what I like to call ‘widget companies’ instead of trying to build everything. We now work in an environment where ‘plug ‘n play’ companies work together to deliver compelling products and services that don’t cost an arm and a leg to build.

So, who are the ‘The Digital Pioneers’ and how are they discovered?

So, here’s an example of where a vital stake holder could better engage to make a bigger impact.

I was contacted by the British Council this week and asked if I would consider becoming a mentor to a Hong Kong based mobile games company under a new scheme called the ‘Digital Pioneer Programme’. I have accepted because I think it’s a brilliant initiative.

I will also be talking to them about how to improve the programme itself. I’m impressed by their open-door policy to change where necessary.

The Digital Pioneer programme is a British Council programme for digital pioneers in the UK and Hong Kong. Six people, three from each country, have been selected following a competitive application process to take part in the first Digital Pioneer programme.

The Digital Pioneer programme 2007 is focussing on content development and an integral part of the programme is mentoring. Each digital pioneer has been asked to outline the area that they would like their mentor to be working in and the kind of input they would like from their mentor.

The Digital Pioneers from Hong Kong will have mentors in the UK and the UK pioneers will have mentors in Hong Kong. The initial visits will take place at the end of March with the UK pioneers going out to Hong Kong first and the Hong Kong pioneers returning the following week.

The UK pioneers will be in Hong Kong 17-24 March and we would like them to have the opportunity to meet their mentors during this visit. The Hong Kong pioneers will be in the UK 29 March – 5 April and again we would like the pioneers to have an opportunity to meet with their mentors during this week.

My role as a mentor will be to work with the Digital Pioneer and help them to access the market opportunities they are seeking in either the UK or Hong Kong.

I will

• put the pioneer in contact with people in industry who might be interest in buying the services/products offered by the pioneer’s business;
• be able to advise on how to access the market for example who is the best person to contact, what form the contact should take for example email or telephone;
• comment on the business they are running and offer advice on how to run the business more effectively;
• be a sounding board for ideas that the pioneer might have in terms of business or market development.

The (lucky) company

The guy from Hong Kong that I’m going to mentor is Wallis Wong.

Walis set up his first start up company in 2004 and has successfully developed and launched more than 20 mobile games and services including two award winning games, 3G Mopas and Hong Kong War. More information can be found at www.3dynamics.com.

It’s ironic to think that Enterprise Ireland sent 2 of its consultants to review my company’s business recently. Neither of them had any experience in our area. In fact, one of them was so bad I asked him to leave our office in Dublin, as he was ‘wasting my time and I was wasting his’. Note to Enterprise Ireland – please hire people who ‘get the Internet thing’ and stop wasting tons of EU funds in administration fees.

So, how do we get all the relevant stake holders to collaborate and discuss how to implement better collaboration? I know this may sound a little silly, but sometimes you need to plan how you’re going to plan.

UK
May I call all of the aforementioned, the DTI, British Council, Business Link and Gordon Browne to a sit down breakfast? If Gordon is going to pay for it, why don’t we make it the Ivy?

Ireland
I’d like to call upon Enterprise Ireland to have a meeting with those of us who author Web2Ireland blog (I’m one of the authors), Tom Raftery, James Corbett, Judy Gibbons and all the other smart and well connected people I’ve failed to mention by name. I’ll happily host it at one of our restaurants in Dublin.

What are your thoughts?

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How ironic. After noticing Mike Arrington visited our blog today, I decided to email him for his opinion on my recent post about Oliver Starr’s departure from MobileCrunch. Less than 5 minutes later I received a Flickr email informing me that I’m now the proud Administrator of the TechCrunch UK member group.

It’s a shame TechCrunch UK no longer exists and I’m the only member of the group. Is this what it takes for me to be in charge of something? that is, no Web site and no members?!

I’m lonely, please join my TechCrunch UK group!

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Does this guy ever learn from his mistakes? I picked up a story about his latest victim from Sam Sethi, who also found himself on Arrington’s evening menue.

Oliver Starr is the latest guy to fall victim at the Arrington dinning table .

Michael asked me to stop writing MobileCrunch after I agreed to accept a position as Senior Mobile Analyst for Chris Shipley’s Guidewire Group as Mike feels that TechCrunch and Guidewire are competitive concerns.I had every intention of continuing as the author of MobileCrunch and was sincerely disappointed that Michael chose to make the decision he had. I have put over a year of my life into building up the readership and content at MobileCrunch and having to start building an audience again from zero is not something that I relish doing. – Oliver Starr.

Perhaps I’m too lenient, should I have compared Arrington to Hannibal Lecter?

Anyone for dinner?

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The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is responsible for creating and harmonizing standards such as HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) and HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol).

In 2005, The W3C started an initiative called the Mobile Web Initiative (MWI). The MWI Best Practices was one of the first documents created by the group. The document is basically a list of guidelines to help developers, who are not necessarily familiar with mobile technology, develop Web sites that will work better on mobile devices such as PDAs and Web enabled phones.

In the interest of taking advantage of existing expertise within the W3C, the group reviewed guidelines that already existed and started with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). These guidelines help developers build sites that are accessible to as many people as possible. In short, Web accessibility is about making sure all visitors [users/people] on your Web site can access the content regardless of ability.

We took this route because Web sites that are built using accessibility guidelines for people are also very useful for making sites more accessible on different device types, such as desktop computers, laptops and mobile phones.

We went through the accessibility guidelines and discussed each one in great detail via conference calls and email. We discarded the guidelines that weren’t appropriate for mobile devices and modified, where appropriate, the remaining guidelines. We then added additional best practices that didn’t exist in WCAG. So in summary, we only used what was appropriate.

During an MWI email conversation, Luca made a passing comment about disabled people’s needs and how they should be met. In my opinion, he made too many assumptions about how to be fair and equal to disabled people.

Rather than clog up the W3C’s inbox with opinions about making the Web accessible to all, I thought it might be a good idea to write this post and solicit readers’ opinions.

So, Luca was responding to the following comment

… help developers ensure that they build Web sites which are accessible to as many users as possible, including people with disabilities.

Luca’s response was

People with disabilities should get software or reformatting proxies built to enable them to hit the regular web. Are hotel rooms built for people with disabilities? no, but they usually have 3 or 4 rooms built for that purposes.

Do metro stations have enough lifts to carry thousands of people going in and out? no. They have one lift or two for people with disabilities and ladies pushing a pram.

Same goes for anything else. We can’t disable the web because of people with disabilities, we need to enable it for them. Same goes for the mobile web of course. In fact, it’s already hard enough to enable the mobile web for people without disabilities…

Leaving the difficulties of developing Web sites that will work on mobile devices aside; I would like to focus on Luca’s comment regarding people with disabilities.

First of all, his last comment about not disabling the Web for people with disabilities is obvious. However, I think the rest of his comment demonstrates ignorance and lack of awareness for people who have different needs.

I think he’s talking about disabled people, as if they deserve second best. They’re perhaps even second class citizens who deserve only to stay in specific rooms in hotels and leave by the back door because it’s wide enough for delivery services.

Not only is Web accessibility a moral and corporate social responsibility, it’s actually a legal requirement in countries such as the UK, United States and Australia. Furthermore, it makes good business sense given all the financial and search optimisation benefits which we’ll cover in another post.

There are circumstances where it’s not possible to provide equal access to everyone all of the time.

‘Accessibility’, we should try our best not to discriminate against other people, by making sure everyone in society has equal access and is treated fairly – but should this come at the expense of making redundancies or closing down a business?

Below are three examples that demonstrate how society just doesn’t get it, or perhaps, doesn’t care?

1. My first example below demonstrates that providing the same access to everyone isn’t possible all of the time, yet people are still treated equally.
2. The second example demonstrates a situation where it is possible to provide equal access, but a local authority has decided to prohibit ‘access to everyone’, in favour of the sentimental value of a building.
3. My final example draws the parallel between the first two accessibility issues that are recognised by everyone, irrespective of the industry they’re involved in and the online world.

Every example is based on my personal experience.

Example 1

My next door neighbour is a solicitor with an office located on the forth floor of a very narrow, listed building . It’s technically impossible to install a lift. The cost of adding an extension in order to install a lift is significantly disproportionate to the benefits of making it accessible to wheelchair users. In short, he would go out of business if forced to install a lift.

So, to ensure he is being inclusive and fairly accommodating all clients, he makes customers and potential customers aware that he’s very happy to meet with them in the café across the road.

Do you think he should try to install a lift no matter what the cost? Or do you think it’s ok to meet people in the café?

Example 2

Retail outlet Gap is located in the scenic high-street of Guildford . Gap also happens to be located in a listed building. They applied for planning permission to have a lift installed during a complete refurbishment project, perhaps for dads like me with two small children in a double pushchair (gremlins at the best of time when your back is turned) (note, I include myself and my double pushchair in the classification “disabled” here, I am not restricting the term to the traditional sense of the word).

Gap’s planning permission to install a lift was denied by Guildford Council as it is a listed building. Today, Gap has a beautifully furnished retail outlet but it doesn’t permit access to the men’s department for a great number of potential customers, including dads with double pushchairs and wheelchair users.

Is this ok? If you were the planning authority for Guildford and you had to choose between two pieces of legislation, would you choose a building over people? Could Gap still be taken to court? Personally I think there’s a case to take against Guildford Council.

Could Guildford Council be taken to court? Remember the airport was also found 50% liable when Ryanair lost their court case for charging a passenger for the use of a wheelchair.

Example 3

River Island (you’ve probably read about this in the media last year) built a Web site that didn’t provide equal access to everyone. In fact, it’s one of the most inaccessible Web sites I’ve every come across. It’s horrible.

Since they’ve been slated in the press and reaping the benefit of free PR (it is arguable at the same time that they used great marketing tactics). River Island has stated that it will build a HTML alternative so that disabled users can have access.

Nearly a year later and River Island still hasn’t built an accessible site. Do they really think that a placeholder page is a ‘get out of jail free card’?

So, not only will River Island have to spend more time and money building a new site, they will have to spend ongoing time and money in maintaining the site because both must provide the same products and services at the same time. Otherwise they’re back to square one and could end up in court.

Some users may feel discriminated against if they’re asked to use another Web site ‘just because’.

Conclusion?

So, if it’s not technically possible, or the cost is significantly disproportionate to the benefit of making a Web site accessible, then provide an alternative.

Does River Island fit into this category? Last year I would have said maybe, but because they haven’t bothered their arse to do anything I’d say they should be sued for purposely excluding people. I have time for organisations that aren’t aware, but I have no time for those that have been told in black and white what they’re doing is wrong.

Should people write to Guildford Council to find out why they think it’s more important to maintain the look ‘n feel of the inside of a building than it is to provide equal access to everyone and to treat everyone fair?

I’m very interested to hear your opinion because often we entertain extreme views in society. We have people who think disabled users get too many parking spaces in shopping centres, while others go on the war path if they see a driver in a disabled spot 5 mins before Tesco is about to close on a Sunday afternoon and it’s unlikely that 50 disabled drivers are about to enter the car park and require that same spot.

If we find it difficult to get it right on the high-street, how on earth are we supposed to get it right online? If we can’t get it right online after 16 years, what hope do we have when making the Web mobile?

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