Skip to content

A podcast for those who design, develop and run websites.

Boagworld is the blog of web strategist Paul Boag who lives in the heart of rural Dorset (hence the cows). He produces a weekly podcast with UX consultant Marcus Lillington on building and running websites. They also run the web design agency Headscape.

Latest Shows

203. Why your blog fails
This week on boagworld: the secret of successful blogging, will Google personalisation affect your sites ranking and how to help users too busy to read.
202. Rocket Surgery Made Easy
This week on Boagworld: Steve Krug on monthly usability, Steve Marshall talks about form design and Paul rejoices over the new era for browsers in Europe.
201. Are clients stupid?
This week on Boagworld: We review the freelancing book Noded, discover a new web tool called 'Support Details' and Paul tells us all a story.
200. A taste of the show
This week's show gives you a taste of the live 12 hour marathon that took place to celebrate the 200th Boagworld.
199. Time to generalise
This week on Boagworld: The changing role of web designers, Colin Firth on content and Becky Jones talks about the changes at Google.

or view all shows

Have your say

Become a part of the Boagworld community...

Disney’s UK online store sucks

Posted in Accessibility on: Thursday, November 3, 2005 by Paul Boag

Today, I am ashamed to be British, no wait, that’s not right. Today, I am ashamed of an American multi national treating us Brits like second-class citizens. Yeah, that sounds better. Disney has launched their new UK store and has made an embarrassing hash of it.

A while back, you may remember I slated the National Trust for their new website. Well, that was nothing compared to the state of the new Disney site.

I am not going to list all the things that are wrong with it. Molly Holzschlag has done a great job of doing that in her open letter to Disney. What I will say is that the Disability Rights Commission estimate that disabled in the UK have a spending power of £50 billion and I would be surprised if any of that make its way into the hands of Disney (at least not via their online store). If you have anything less that 20/20 vision, this site is going to be a challenge, mainly because 90% of the homepage is presented as images!

Come on people, I really thought that we had moved beyond this!

What did you think about this post?

4 Comments

Comments are for the discussion of this post. If you have other questions / comments then post them to the forum or send me an email

  • Ben Tupper says:
    03/11/2005 at 8:20 pm

    Furthermore, I took a look at not just the Disney Store UK site, but I went ahead and clicked through to Disney’s main UK site. From their I found in their Fun Zone section something that seemed to be pretty cool. The Print Station page on their site is a great idea! I even printed a few coloring pages out for my son.
    But alas, Disney can’t even get pages designed FOR PRINT to even print right! Most of the coloring pages print out in 2 pages: page 1 is the coloring image, page 2 is totally useless text that includes hyperlinks!!
    Why when I’m trying to print out a nice little single sheet for my boy to color on does it print 2 friggin’ lines of text on a totally needless page 2 that includes links that are worthless in print?!?!?!
    Arrrrrrgggg!!! Feel my wrath Disney!
    So I have to go into my printer settings and tell it to only print page 1. Totally unnecessary Disney! What the hell?
    I would have to say that Disney’s overall design all over the UK site is very retro. Unfortunately, like Dicso music, it’s not the good kind!!!The Disney site design sucks!

    Reply
  • Anton says:
    04/11/2005 at 5:52 am

    Oh, don’t feel -too- bad… we Americans tend to treat everyone equally like second-class citizens. Har.
    Really though, it sucks. But I’m not surprised. Corporate America is taking a terrible long time in adopting modern thinking in web design. I believe there’s quite a conspiracy theory in there that involves overpriced design shops, underhanded marketing directors, and buzzword-slinging executives that hand projects out to the man with the most colorful tie.

    Reply
  • Krystal says:
    11/01/2006 at 1:22 am

    I enjoy the podcast greatly… but any chance that the American bashing will stop any time soon?… I know we suck.. I know we say “dude” and “totally” and these are faults indeed… I was just hoping…
    I’ve learned a great deal from the cast though. thanks

    Reply
  • Paul Boag says:
    11/01/2006 at 8:15 am

    Hi Krystal,
    hey its only empire envy! America is big, powerful and successful so of course we are going to bash it ;) lol

    Reply

Leave a comment

Additional Information

Produced by Headscape

Boagworld is produced by the web design agency Headscape founded by Marcus, Paul and Chris Scott. Headscape also has a number of other talented guys who blog. Check them out.

  • Craig Rowe is one of our amazing developers and writes some superb posts on everything from .net to AIR apps.

  • Ed Merritt is a Headscape designer who's blog contains examples of his work and a number of free Wordpress themes.

  • Dave McDermid is a Headscape developer who has an excellent blog. He blogs on everything from AJAX to security.

  • Rob Borley is one of our project managers and blogs regularly on client and project management issues.

  • Leigh Howells is our multimedia design guru (whatever one of those is). He blogs on a mixture of design and music.

Paul elsewhere

Paul just can't shut up. He publishes regular audioboos, has a personal blog and is addicted to twitter. He also writes and speaks regularly. Check out the most recent below: