Inkbase

The Disney Store UK has redesigned their website just in time for the holiday season. I don’t know if the Disney team has internal names for their projects, but if they do, I hope they called this one “Goofy”.

Back in October 2004, Andy Clarke proudly announced the launch of an accessible, standards-based Disney Store UK. He even did a round of articles detailing the work that was done on the site. At the time, he said:

The fact that well-known and important brands such as Disney Store appreciate the benefits of web-standards and are keen to embrace accessibility is (in my opinion) a tremendous step.

Here we are a year later and Disney has redesigned their site again, this time with more of a retro feel: nested tables, &nbsp’s and Dreamweaver roll-over scripts. They may have taken a “tremendous step” last year, but this time around it seems they’ve tripped and fallen into the gutter. I can’t imagine what sort of thought process took place in order to make the decision to move away from standards and accessibility. What, if anything, were they thinking?

What do you think Andy?

03 Nov 2005 |