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Fake accessibility claim by iridiuminteractive

  • Writing by Rajveer
  • On September 17th, 2008 at 2:17 pm

iridiumInteractive™ is one of India’s leading full cycle Interactive Services Consulting firms which was started after the success of www.causeaneffect.org, a social entrepreneur which was the fundamental base of their current business. iridiumInteractive claim to have great proficiency in providing web accessibility solutions that covers nearly the entire glossary about accessibility. But in reality their own corporate website stinks and dishonors the accessibility guidelines.

I see this happening very often, but iridiumInteractive disappoints even more, however it sounds funny too. How would you react if a lazy & chubby guy starts giving you tips on how to stay fit and energetic :) . Posting a “Accessibility Policy” page with fancy content can not make the website accessible. You must be wondering what made me show my interest and comment on iridiuminteractive, it all started when I saw the website listed by Google in top three results returned from the keyword – accessibility training program in India. Also take a look to the innocent video from Paul Ackerman who is speaking about web accessibility practice of iridiumInteractive at NASSCOM leadership summit.

In general these trust marks may be fine if they are actually meant for an independent organization itself, no matter if they claim to have a high quality, fully usable/accessible site, for their own feel good cause. But I believe it’s highly unsafe for their clients who trust that IT consultant. Unless those clients also just proudly stats that they have been certified by an accessibility consultancy, yet that would not pass even a basic accessibility evaluation. Isn’t this a discouragement for disable people instead of empowering them?

Recently I have started seeing companies in India talking about accessibility. It is good that web accessibility is getting some consideration, but the ineffectiveness with which it is talked about really disturbs me. If you scratch the surface you can see that behind all those nice talks, many companies that don’t really care about and understand web accessibility or disabled users. Companies like these are just trying to get some attention so people can hear from them (fortunately some are already famous and people trust them). When it comes to the work they go on with their outdated ways of delivering inaccessible, invalid markup to make fast and easy money.

What makes me crazy the most is not that these companies are stealing potential clients, anyway I don’t run a company. It is that I care about web accessibility and standards because I want to contribute to build a better web for everyone. I hope iridiumInteractive shall do some battle with their website and in future I update my article accordingly.

6 Responses

  1. Niel September 18th, 2008 at 10:10 am

    That’s absolutely true. I’m currently working for a public sector company in India as a web designer, and their website is also an ideal model of this. It is really very bad when it comes to accessibility. And when spoke with the concerned people about it, they already knew about the situation. Finally I could imagine that generally it is a matter of money and resources. Or they may did not have the prefect resources to do an accessible website for them when it was started.

  2. Aroopam Bhuyan September 18th, 2008 at 11:15 am

    very good observation rajveer….accessibility is outmost important for all the projects…if the company which propogates accessibility doesnt give importance to its own work how can it teach others….even in my company accesibility and usability are of not much importance…projects ends when all the features and funtionalities are achieved….never do they work to check whether its a usable product or anything for accessibility is done

  3. maverick December 23rd, 2008 at 4:25 pm

    As an ex-iridium interactive employee – I’ll have to say ” YOU ARE RIGHT !” I’d be out of words if I start describing the kind of work ii does – and honestly. GOD save their clients. Paul Ackerman had actually come up with an alternate and honest slide-show about accessibility. How the CEO persuaded Ackerman to change it – is another story by itself :) Please stay far away from this company. They claim expertise in what they do – but trust me, expertise in conning clients is more like it

  4. George Barr January 15th, 2009 at 9:59 pm

    Hi,

    There are many companies involved in all aspect of web design and development that just do not know what they are doing. They learn a little HTML, not even CSS in some case and sell themself’s are web designer/developers. I am not in the least surprised that accessibilty is an issue, even though the W3C have decent enough guidelines. I wonder how many of these cowboy outfits have every read a W3C document?

    regards
    George

  5. Someone July 14th, 2009 at 1:37 am

    Hi everyone,

    I too agree on the point. I was a part of this organization and right now i left just because of this fake details. The company who talks about the accessibility does not have anybody in the organization who actually know about the accessibility. Kindly look into the client list and check the accessibility you will come to know, they can’t and they never go for it, they just can say that they are capable but actually they are not at all capable for anything.
    They are just fooling the market and getting the projects..that’s it. Reply back to get some more about this company.

    *Moderator its my kind request to do publish this comment as i was a part of this company and i know the truth. No one here is capable enough to handle any deal. They are just fake that’s it. Give a call to the numbers mentioned in the website you will come to know the rest.

    Regards
    Someone

  6. SV July 27th, 2009 at 3:49 pm

    Hmm. I was trying to open their website for last 15 mins to see if they have changed even a little after this blog post. But it’s still loading!!!

    I would suggest them either they should learn and continue their business or they should opt to shut down their accessibility division.

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