Web Accessibility of the Presidential Candidate Sites, December 9, 1999

The Candidates' Sites on Compact-Display Browsers

Though compact-display units are hardly the dominant Web-access tool, they form an increasing part of the daily browse--and by November 7, 2000, their popularity is expected to explode.

We used the most popular compact-display unit, the Palm V, together with the ProxiWeb 3.5 browser, to access the candidates' Web sites. We chose ProxiWeb because it is among the most forgiving browsers, connecting to a proxy Web site which re-sizes images to fit the screen and reformats material that would be otherwise impossible to display.

The graphical results are presented below in rating order.

Al Gore

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4 screens of the Al Gore website on Palm V

Gore's site is clear and well-presented on small screens. Most images reduce well, the text appears quickly, and especially welcome are its several alternate options for multimedia. Gore's is the only site which works better on palmtops than it does on handicapped-accessible browsers because the menus are placed on the right-hand side of the display. OrbitAccess palmtop rating: A

Bill Bradley

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6 screens of the Bill Bradley website on Palm V

Bradley's site is frame-based, but provides an opt-out to non-frames pages. It appears on the second screen. Once in the non-frames site, the organization is clear and uncluttered, beginning with news and working through other site links, biographies, and contact information. OrbitAccess palmtop rating: A-

Pat Buchanan

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6 screens of the Pat Buchanan website on Palm V

Buchanan's site displays well on Palm screens, but is cluttered and requires multiple screen drags to see the contents. However, icons are clear even when reformatted, and all the text is available from every link. OrbitAccess palmtop rating: B

George W. Bush

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6 screens of the George W. Bush website on Palm V

Bush's quantity of opening graphics make it a frustrating experience to find when the content begins. 14 screens later, text appears--and then it is well-organized and clear. OrbitAccess palmtop rating: C

Orrin Hatch

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4 screens of the Orrin Hatch website on Palm V

Hatch's site doesn't get the goods to the voter quickly enough, with the 'Skinny Cats' fundraising appeal coming before the links, which appear before any info about Hatch. OrbitAccess palmtop rating: C

John McCain

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4 screens of the John McCain website on Palm V

McCain's frames stand in the way at first, but once the savvy voter clicks past the front page, the links and images are presented clearly, and the text is well-organized. OrbitAccess palmtop rating: C

Steve Forbes

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6 screens of the Steve Forbes website on Palm V

The server handling the Forbes site doesn't look for the browser, and all the site visitor sees is 'Click now to refresh'. There are screens of icons before the real content shows up, but from there on it's organized and legible. OrbitAccess palmtop rating: C

Alan Keyes

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5 screens of the Alan Keyes website on Palm V

The graphical links on the Keyes home page were not functional in ProxiWeb. The site was a dead end. By using a desktop browser to determine the pages, we found that subsequent page were frames without information. Only with assistance from a desktop were we able to access subsequent pages. OrbitAccess palmtop rating: D

Gary Bauer

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3 screens of the Gary Bauer website on Palm V

Bauer's site is not effective on Palm machines. Because it is based exclusively on images, the images are incomprehensible when re-formatted to fit the small screen. Fragments of Bauer's image are lined up vertically, with no identification as to their purpose. OrbitAccess palmtop rating: F

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