Jibbering Musings

Odeon Cinemas in the UK have probably one of the worst websites of any organisation on the web today, you can’t do anything - just phone them up if you ever want to use their cinema. A lot easier for you.

Matthew Somerville as one of his many great services transformed this live with a proxy into An accessible version of the Odeon site (unfortunately no longer working) that made it instantly accessible to just about anyone, using any software. Odeon unfortunately decided to shut this down (see the previous link) they really don’t care about their customers, or almost certainly the law.

Fair enough it’s Odeon’s right to decline customers if they don’t feel it’s a risk, and if people were complaining, then perhaps they should do something about it - unfortunately though shutting down these proxy sites hurts all accessibility sites. Proxies can do a great job at providing access to all, but to do this, they have to by their very nature “re-publish” the content, if the sites refuse to allow proxies to operate, then they are certainly not making reasonable accomodation.

There are so many in-accessible sites that it’s normally not worth complaining about one, but when the organisation is not only inaccessible, but actively denies accessibility even when aware of the issues, action needs to be taken.