Jackie's Take on a SiteBuilder with a Difference

I've been playing with the site builder at www.webeden.co.uk . It builds a Flash-and-Javascript-based site, so I thought it would be clunky and deliver a completely inaccessible site.

But actually, what happens is that although the basic site is flawed (a screen reader can read the menus, which are HTML, but might not read the text, which is Flash) if you switch off Javascript you get a useful little text version of the site, which is very accessible indeed. This isn't obvious to the user in any way, so if I were building a site using this, I'd put instructions on an 'Accessibility' page, where I'd also tell people that although they can't resize text via the browser in the normal way, they can 'Zoom In'. This also ups the size of the images, so actually has some advantages over resizing text via the browser. In terms of HTML I've seen a lot worse from online site builders - the page I checked didn't validate due to one minor error in the code.

The site building tools look good - nice clean interfaces, lots of useful explanation in the dialogue boxes, and best of all, the templates look well designed and come with a range of ready-built page-sets for multiple purposes. Looks like the basic cost is about £2.99 per month, though I bet there are tempting features to up that price!

The few minutes I spent with the WebEden SiteMaker were not enough to get much of an idea about its robustness, but if I were a volunteer with a website to build quickly and cheaply, I'd be looking at it with great interest. There is a 14-day demo which you can use without having to submit any credit card details.

Jackie Carey
Community First

Do you think the organisations you are working with may benefit from this to reduce those costs?