This "Open Government" website is made all in Flash and is utterly inaccessible from a Web Accessibility perspective. In fact, I couldn't even imagine a more diametrically opposed website implementation to that very same website's stated purpose.

Wait, that's a lie. It could have been built using both Microsoft Silverlight and Adobe Flash in some weird kind of "Schrödinger's Website" abomination. Anyway, not the point.

Chris Foresman, writing for Ars Technica, had this to observe:

After just a cursory browsing, here are some of the usability and data accessibility issues we observed. You can't select, copy, or paste any text. Your browser's font override features won't work, so you can't adjust the font or its size to be more readable. Your browser's built-in in-page search won't work, and you can't use the keyboard to scroll through the text. You can't parse or scrape the data in any way; the design is fixed-width, so it's not going to work well on different screen sizes; and browser plugins, like Greasemonkey, can't adjust anything. Basically when it comes to text at all, if you don't like the style or are visually impaired, you're screwed.

What's so bizarre about this entire thing is that Flash is technically capable of many of these things. Done the right way, it is absolutely possible to make a Flash website that is a lot more user-friendly and accessible. You can even ensure that search engines can index the content if you do it right. Adobe, however, seems unaware of how their own flagship web product works.

This led me to wonder: is Adobe simply trying to con tech-unsavvy Government decision makers into signing a number of contracts tying future Government websites and/or data to Adobe's proprietary data formats and products, ensuring a healthy new stream of revenue for the next couple of years, or are they actually so incompetent that they couldn't make their own advocacy website adhere to the very principles it purportedly advocates?

Perhaps even worse is that this website really doesn't call for the use of Flash at all, except perhaps for all those superfluous little animations it's littered with. The interface, content and navigation is about as straightforward as it gets.

I also managed to break the first page's introduction paragraph simply by attempting to select some of the text; I've posted screenshots of the breakage on my Flickr.

All said and done, if the new Obama administration truly wants to create a more Open Goverment, they'd do well to stay away from Adobe's products and data formats; as Clay Johnson of Sunlight Labs wrote: if the data format has an ® by its name, it probably isn't great for transparency or open data.

1. Hyperlink deliberately limited to the meaningless word "website". Adobe does not deserve any link-cred for this piece of inaccessible garbage. ↵

Short URL: http://farukat.es/p341

Note the introduction paragraph, which is busted merely due to my attempt to select its text, during which act the paragraph scrolled up one line and was rendered broken.

As this site's back-end was put together in only a couple days' time, the form was also not hooked up to a database yet for storing submissions. It still isn't, but at least the form now emails properly. Nonetheless, it all means that any and all messages sent with it have gone lost. Sent into a void, without the void returning an error to you or to myself.

Please accept my sincere apologies. If you'd still like to get in touch, please submit your feedback again. Or, simply email me directly.

Short URL: http://farukat.es/p340

To conclude my ongoing road trip with, my mom suggested she fly in from the Netherlands and we drive the entire Route 66 together, all the way from Chicago to L.A.

We started Thursday last week, in Chicago. This photo was taken the afternoon before, so that we could get an easy early start without stopping right away.

Short URL: http://farukat.es/p337

Last night, we arrived in Santa Monica at the Pier where the current official End of Route 66 is. We took some detours and made up for time by taking the Interstate for certain parts, but we saw countless of beautiful things, drove through numerous little towns—some hardly still worthy of the name—and had an absolutely fantastic time the whole way.

Short URL: http://farukat.es/p338

The Santa Monica Pier, large and on black

Short URL: http://farukat.es/p339

From Chicago…

…to L.A.

Stitched together with DoubleTake for OS X.

Dan Rice has a stall at the end of Route 66 on the Santa Monica Pier, selling made-in-America Route 66 T-shirts and memorabiliia. He has countless of great stories about the Route 66 and its history, and is an all-around great guy.

If you ever drive the route, make sure to stop by his stall.

iPhone (3G) photos stitched together <em>on the iPhone</em> using AutoStitch. Truly, I am impressed by the quality of these two panoramas.

iPhone (3G) photos stitched together <em>on the iPhone</em> using AutoStitch. Truly, I am impressed by the quality of these two panoramas.

A combination of 5 x 3 HDR-merged shots at 24mm ƒ/7.1 using Photomatix and DoubleTake.

Or in other words, 15 photos merged into 5 HDR photos merged into 1 HDR panorama.

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/kurafire/4033524659/sizes/o/">View 9355 x 2060 version</a>

Hand-held panorama shot at 34mm ƒ/7.1 and -0.67 EV adjustment.

Stitched together using <a href="http://echoone.com/DoubleTake/">DoubleTake for Mac OS X</a>.

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/kurafire/4034131824/sizes/o/">View 10,000 x 982 version</a>

It seems that uploading my massive panorama of the Painted Desert didn't really work, so here it is in reduced size. (sadface)

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/kurafire/4031584806/sizes/o/">View 6,000 x 590 pixel version</a>

…for The White House!

*groan*