[blindza] Re: Absa messing up their internet banking site

"Jacob Kruger" <jacob@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> · Mon, 27 Aug 2012 10:05:31 +0200

Message below from Christo de Klerk, from via my website, and, these are 
contact details for the guys involved in the reworking of the absa internet 
banking website.

---message contents---
Name: Christo de Klerk
Message:
I am not subscribed to Napsa here from work, so I am sending you the names and 
e-mail addresses of two people to whom you can complain about the Absa internet 
banking site. You can also so long post this information on Napsa. The two 
people are:

Ewert Cloete, 
ewert.cloete@xxxxxxxxxx

and

André Labuscagne, 
andre@xxxxxxxxxxxx

Let them have it.

Kind regards

Christo
---end contents---

Jacob Kruger
Blind Biker
Skype: BlindZA
'...fate had broken his body, but not his spirit...'

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Jacob Kruger 
  To: National Accessibility Portal mailing list with topics focused on 
accessibility for users with visual disabilities. 
  Sent: Friday, August 24, 2012 6:59 PM
  Subject: Re: [Blind] Absa messing up their internet banking site

  Thanks for detailed reply etc., and, yes, will definitely send Andre a bit 
more detail on Monday, since I am also a web developer, so I might be able to 
give him some other rather component/element specific information that I 
wouldn't post to this list, etc., but, like said, will test it a bit more as 
well.

  Also brings up another site am currently busy working on where it takes like 
jaws and/or NVDA like 2 minutes to compile/build up their virtual buffer 
renditions of some of the pages - I didn't develop these from scratch myself, 
but took it over from someone else - and while I thought it was due to virtual 
buffer overload, due to these pages sort of combining what I would have split 
up into roundabout 5-10 pages myself, and then implemening pretty much all of 
the content changes sort of dynamically/on the fly using background activity 
that then tries to implement client side content changes/updates, it turns out 
that even for a sightie some of those pages sort of lock up for like over a 
minute before they can even try clicking on some of their compoenents - again 
comes down to a developer working on their development machine where they've 
configured all of it to exactly how they think it should be configured, etc., 
and then wonder why end-users don't seem to comfortable using the interface 
they've put together, but anyway...<smile>

  Stay well

  Jacob Kruger
  Blind Biker
  Skype: BlindZA
  '...fate had broken his body, but not his spirit...'

    ----- Original Message ----- 
    From: Christo de Klerk 
    To: 'National Accessibility Portal mailing list with topics focused on 
accessibility for users with visual disabilities.' 
    Sent: Friday, August 24, 2012 6:13 PM
    Subject: Re: [Blind] Absa messing up their internet banking site

    Hi Jacob

    Thanks for posting this e-mail about Absa's internet banking site. There is 
now a new guy working on the accessibility issue, André. I will post his e-mail 
address here on Monday, so that you can all let him have it directly. He spent 
an hour with me on Tuesday, but that was before they implemented this new 
screen to elect whether to use the old or the new site. I suggested they put 
the option there, but I have not seen yet how it has been implemented. From 
what you say, it works less than desirably.

    Anyway, we worked through a number of scenarios and I pointed out 
accessibility issues which he noted down. I believe he left my desk a very 
worried man. I think he discovered that the accessibility is a far bigger mess 
than he ever imagined.

    They did some very stupid things while developing the site and I told them 
so. They got versions of Jaws and Window-Eyes, but they did not involved blind 
people in their testing, instead tried to do the testing themselves with these 
screen readers that they did not even know or understand. André did not even 
know or understand about browse mode in Window-Eyes or forms mode in the Shark. 
How can you ever test a website if you do not have even that basic knowledge. 
Whenever they got stuck, they just clicked with the mouse. I had recommended 
that they should test with the screen turned off, but they couldn't manage 
that. They had never studied any accessibility guidelines before they started 
development and now things look like a rewrite.

    Something else that shocked me, was when André told me they used gadgets 
for all the modules on the site. Gadgets, just now that Microsoft has decided 
to discontinue gadgets because of the security risk they introduce.

    I have been able to do account payments and interaccount transfers on the 
new site, but I have also often had the experience Jacob reported where the 
site just gives up on one. On Monday morning when I paid my accounts for the 
month, I had to logon four times. A hint that I can give you, is that things 
work better if you turn off browse mode in Window-Eyes or turn on forms mode in 
the shark. That is unfortunate, because then you lose all your navigational 
features. But if you turn on browse mode or turn off forms mode, you won't have 
all the information in the buffer and once you toggle out of that mode, the 
correct item will not necessarily have focus. Although you get more information 
when browse mode is off or forms mode is on, navigating around the screen 
becomes a major issue.

    Paying a single beneficiary is a problem and currently the best way is to 
tell it to pay multiple beneficiaries and then just check the one you actually 
want to pay. This can also be a challenge, because you can have a huge screen 
full of beneficiaries if you have a lot of them and it can take some time to 
work your way through all of them, just to find that the page has timed out and 
you have been logged off because the screen reader didn't read the warning 
popup.

    So, all of you who use Absa's internet banking site, please complain 
bitterly and don't be over-friendly about it. Complain directly to André when I 
give you his e-mail address, or send your complaints to me and I will pass them 
on.

    Yes, I am extremely p'd off with them about this. I have been engaged in 
this war since August last year and despite all their promises and 
undertakings, it is not coming right and in the meantime Absa has got rid of so 
many excellent programmers, that there are not that many of us left to do the 
work.

    Please give full details of issues you encounter.

    Kind regards

    Christo

    From: blind-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:blind-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On 
Behalf Of Jacob Kruger
    Sent: 24 August 2012 4:13 PM
    To: BlindZA; NAPSA Blind
    Subject: [Blind] Absa messing up their internet banking site

    I have also sent them a slightly more formal e-mail as well, but, since 
roundabout this week sometime, when you log on to absa internet banking site, 
immediately after entering the necessary password characters, it loads a frame 
where you're meant to choose whether to go to the new version of the site, or 
the old version, which took me the need to go read the graphical link name by 
character/letter to figure out what the two links meant, since they have no alt 
tags assigned, and if you then hit enter/click on the link for the old version 
of the site it works fine, but, if I try hitting enter on the link for the new 
version of the site, to try it out, using internet explorer 8, it notified me 
something about an ajax frame, activated application mode, and then internet 
explorer itself crashed, and tried to recover, but ended up being sort of 
automatically rerouted to a page saying something along the lines of - you have 
been logged out - thanks for using absa.

    Either way, seems they've given up on providing a fully worthwhile service 
for us, and would guess for all sighted users as well, since think that browser 
crash might in fact happen to people not using a screen reader if they're not 
using like internet explorer 9 or something.

    Will try it out a bit later, with like firefox 14, or something to see what 
happens then, but, any other regular users might as well also give it a try, 
and if works the same for you, do us a favour, and send the complaint e-mail to 
absa themselves.

    That e-mail address is:

    ib@xxxxxxxxxx

    Stay well

    Jacob Kruger
    Blind Biker
    Skype: BlindZA
    '...fate had broken his body, but not his spirit...'

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[blindza] Re: Absa messing up their internet banking site

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