Auckland SPCA
[February 2004] The Auckland Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals strives to encourage the humane treatment of all animals and to prevent cruelty, to provide shelter for animals in need and to promote a humane understanding of animals.
Winner of Netguide Best Community site (Non-Profit) 2003
Splash Screen
The first thing you see on arrival is a splash screen. In general a splash screen is not very useful and delays visitors. The SPCA splash screen though is informative and amusing and there are several links you can follow. After a few moments, if you haven't clicked on anything, you're automatically taken to the Home Page.
Layout
The layout of the site is clean and clear in appealing red, white and blue colours. Navigation is on the left and a sensibly sized column of text occupies the centre of the page. Unfortunately for visitors who don't receive images, the image alternative text ('ALT text') is woefully lacking. Since that affects the whole navigation system it means the site becomes something of a lucky-dip if you're blind or have a slow connection, for example. 'ALT text' is such a fundamental aspect of web design and is so easy to do that there's really no excuse for this.
Content
If you can see the navigation then you'll find there's an excellent selection of comprehensive information about adopting animals, how to help the SPCA and news, along with magazine articles, a shop, things for kids to do and back issues of the society's magazine. An inspirational quote appears on many pages, with texts by the Dalai Lama, Henry David Thoreau and others.
The writing is clear, straightforward and well laid out with plenty of headings, making it easy to skim a page.
Accessibility Coding Let-Downs
At least, you can skim if you're sighted but unfortunately the coding of the site just isn't up to spec. The headings aren't coded as headings, but simply as bold red text. This make the site less usable for some visitors and also reduces the ability of software agents (such as search engines) to make sense of the text.
Similarly the pages all show the same 'Title'. This is a handicap if you want to add pages to your bookmarks - the Kidstuff page and the Adopt page will both have the same text in your list of favourites, for example.
Summary
There is a wealth of well-written information on the SPCA site. The site looks great, loads quickly and is easy to navigate for most people. There is more to a website though than looks, and here the coding behind the scenes is in urgent need of work to bring it up to recognised accessibility standards.
www.spca.org.nz