Does the iPhone advert ban begin to shift the responsibility of web accessibility?
The claim by the Advertising Standards Authority that an iPhone advert was misleading seems confused, and sends a worrying signal.
According to the ASA, the television advert for the iPhone misled viewers by claiming users had access to the whole of the internet, when in fact the phone doesn’t support Java and Flash technologies. Apple’s argument was that the claim in the advert referred to the availability of web pages, and not to the visual appearance of them.
Two people complained about the advert, which consequently Apple has been asked not to show again in its current form.
This worries me.
Anyone involved with creating web pages will know that it’s incredibly difficult – and generally not even necessary – to make all web pages look the same in every browser, even without proprietary technologies such as Flash. Therefore it would be impossible for any device to claim that they did: it is the author who controls a page’s usability, not the browser.
Which brings me to my chief concern: by upholding these complaints, does the ASA inadvertently give the impression that the user agent – not the author – should be responsible for making web pages accessible to its users? Which would be a very grey day indeed for web standards and accessibility.
iPhone ad rapped as ‘misleading’ (BBC News)
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