Fuddland

Although I’d read about it earlier in the month, Lyle reminded me today about Odeon Cinema’s complete lack of understanding regarding accessibility issues when it comes to website design.

The backstory goes like this: Matthew Somerville coded a very nice, accessible portal to the Odeon website, which provided cinema times and the like but without all the unnecessary Flash and other scripty rubbish. He’s done the same with the UK National Rail timetables and a couple of other sites, and they’ve all been lauded for their obvious benefits.

Sadly Odeon’s lawyers didn’t see it that way, and threatened Somerville with legal action unless he took his site down; fair enough he was using copyrighted images, trademarks, etc., but they claimed he was illegally [or, at least, immorally] storing users’ data. Somerville states that he did no such thing and merely passed the data straight on to Odeon’s own database through their usual channels. Nevertheless, Odeon wanted the site down and so it’s gone. I don’t think that’s a particularly clever way to go about their business — or to put it in Lyle’s more apt words, I was keffed off with this bunch of arse — so I dashed off the following email to their contact address.

Dear Sir or Madam,

I understand you have threatened legal action resulting in the taking-down of a version of your online cinema information (previously found at the URL http://www.dracos.co.uk/odeon/), which provided the same information as your website, but in a way that was significantly more accessible to users with disabilities or with access only to certain restricted web browsers (for example, those without Javascript or Macromedia Flash capabilities).

I wish to express my sincere disappointment in your course of action, given that the person responsible, Matthew Somerville, made it clear from the outset his intention was never to profit from his efforts nor to slander, libel or otherwise defame Odeon in any way, but to provide information about your cinemas in a much more accessible manner. Your arguments about users’ data being collected have been declared to be unfounded by Mr Somerville, as all information is passed on to your own database, yet for some reason you chose to dispute this easily-checkable claim and appear to be exhibiting the classic “fingers in your ears / I’m not listening to you / la la la” stance commonly seen in the school playground.

Of course I take your point about his use of copyrighted images, but instead of threatening Mr Somerville with legal action, you might have offered to take on board his ideas and implement them in your official site, and graciously acknowledged his efforts either publicly, financially or both. I can’t imagine you would have anything against making your own site more accessible to the general public, and his proof of concept would have saved you valuable time and money had you had the vision to see it for what it was.

I have used your official website several times in the past and, even as a user without disabilities, I found it unwieldy and difficult to navigate. The lack of resizable text on a dark background makes it difficult to read on a high-resolution monitor. Furthermore, the booking system has presented significant problems. On receiving my credit card bill after the last occasion I used your online booking system, I discovered that I had been charged twice and am currently awaiting a refund for the erroneous charge. Attempting to use your website with a text-only browser such as Lynx, or with images turned off (as a user on dial-up internet access might do) is a joke.

I will think again about giving Odeon Cinemas my business and will advise my friends and family to do the same, since you appear to be far more interested in protecting your copyrighted material than catering to the widest variety of potential cinema-goers that you possibly could.

Yours faithfully,

Me

Anyone wanting to use this as a template for their own message to Odeon’s customer service address, info@odeonuk.com, please feel free to copy, paste and apply a thesaurus liberally.

#1

Cathy | 2004 / 07 / 16 – 13:59

Selfishly though, my biggest annoyance over this hooha is that I didn’t even know there was an accessible version of the site! The official Odeon site is completely unusable in FF, it’s one of the few sites I have to open IE for. Why couldn’t people have told me this earlier?

#2

Richard | 2004 / 07 / 16 – 19:52

Odeon are clearly barking and their website is truly awful. But I think their quibble was actually that some of Odeon’s customers were worried their information was being collected by someone else. Odeon didn’t quite claim that the information was being collected by Matthew Somerville, just that some customers believed it was and were concerned.

That’s how I read their email anyway.

Myself, I don’t use their website because an Odeon cinema is about 5 minutes from my door. So I just walk up there if I want to see what’s on :o)

#3

David | 2004 / 07 / 17 – 00:54

Re #2: They did indeed claim Somerville was collecting user information, despite his assertion that this was not the case. From Odeon’s second email to Somerville, with my emphasis:

You claimed that you are “not collecting or storing any user data”. We dispute this, but even if it were the case, the fact remains that users submit data via your website and again, by use of our logos, listings and data collection, users believe that they are submitting data only to Odeon.

As Somerville says, the users were submitting the data to Odeon, albeit via his accessible site, since the data was passed directly on to Odeon without being saved elsewhere.

#4

Richard | 2004 / 07 / 17 – 16:40

Ah, I beg your pardon. I read the first email but only scanned through the second. That’ll teach me.

#5

David | 2004 / 07 / 17 – 16:46

Re #4: No problem, I just didn’t want Odeon getting off so lightly. ;)

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