The Second Tasbo www.sketch.com.uk

For those who haven’t come across the concept a while ago I proposed an “Anti award” I guess with a view to naming and shaming, not simply for products or services that were in accessible (there would be too many) but for those vendors, developers, manufacturers etc who seemed to take a deliberate even perverse decision to create something which was more of a crime against accessibility.


Tasbo’s are technology anti-social behavior orders, and the first was given to Amazon and the Authors Guild of America.

This award goes to a single, specific website, and is equally shared between the Site owners and the Site developers. The former should have had the common sense to look at the site and say “what ??? your joking, were not trying to stop people coming to the restaurant” and to the developers who simply should have known better

The site in question is http://www.sketch.uk.com/ it is entirely programmed in Flash but that’s just the start of the problems. First up youd better have broadband, and not an Iphone as it’s a large file to load and Apple mobile OS don’t support flash, we are then greeted with a series of animations that are visually confusing and which successfully animate the text on screen. This means that the text that you are trying to read moves as you read it, which includes becoming a mirror image of itself at times !

Trying to view menus is an experience, having found the link a transparent window opens over the current text and animations meaning that you are trying to read new text with an animation and old text beneath it

The worst thing is the restaurant has some great reviews on the web, it’s clearly well thought of a stylish and innovative place to eat, but based on the website you might well decide that it really is just too much bother.

So having shown the website to a number of a people via networks and twitter we garnered a few judges reviews of the site – these included

“this site is an excellent candidate for a inaccessibility hall of shame”

“I'd say one of the worst websites in any category”

“I'd say one of the worst...”

So come on guys, im sure you can make it a little easier for me to give you my money because the pumpkin soup sounds great – but I only know that because someone else’s site told me !