Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Accessible

The other day, I tried to leave a comment on a web page I visit fairly regularly. And I couldn’t. See, and this person had made it so you had to be on Google+ in order to leave a comment and while I have a Google account, it’s not a + (and it never will be).

I was bummed, and it’s not like I could say anything to the blogger since I couldn’t leave a comment. People read websites in all kinds of ways, and if we want to interact with them, we have to make it as easy as possible because this is the internet age and people are used to getting what they want or moving on to something else. It’s not like there’s a shortage of writer websites.

Even if it’s a site I really like, if it’s difficult to access, I’m not going to bother. This is why I work hard to make sure my own site is as simplistic as possible (well, that, and I’m really lazy). I have links to my Twitter, you can subscribe by email, there’s a button for all types of RSS feeds. I even threw a special link to Feedly, since that was the reader I recommended during that big thing I did. True, I absolutely refuse to use Google+, Facebook, and Bloglovin (THERE’S SUPPOSED TO BE A G THERE, STOP ACTING LIKE THERE SHOULDN’T BE) and that limits me in some ways, but for the most part I will bend over backwards to make sure anyone anywhere can read my blog. If someone mentions some new way to follow blogs, I will add it.


I just have to make sure people are able to comment and tell me about it.

Have you ever seen a blogger shoot themselves in the foot in some way? Do you have any suggestions for making a blog accessible to all?

6 comments:

  1. A lot of people are switching to the Google+ comment box and others are having the same experience as you - they can't comment. I'm on Google+ so I can, but I always have to remember to uncheck the 'share on Google+' box.
    Not on Facebook either and gave on on Bloglovin' even though I still have an account.
    Disqus is another commenting system some people have issues with.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I find Google+ to be confusing and hard to use. I don't like their profiles, either. It used to be that when I got an email notifying me of a comment, I could click on their name, get a profile that listed their blogs, and that made it easy for me to return the visit. Not anymore if they have a Google + profile!

    I'm not crazy about the blogs with Word Verification, either. That's another way to make people stop coming to your blog ...

    ReplyDelete
  3. I've had issues with Disqus.... it works fine when I'm using Google Chrome, but freezes up entirely with IE 8.

    I dislike word verification... the captchas are difficult to read at times, and can discourage readers.

    I do allow anonymous posts- some people want to comment but don't have a formal account with google or wordpress, for example. The spam filters still catch most of the spam anyway, and I've got settings so that a comment on a post more than a month or two old has to be approved. Spammers tend to target older posts as it is.

    ReplyDelete
  4. You know, the person -probably- did that without meaning to. Google has been really pushing people to join all their stuff together, so it's quite possible the blogger was just doing something he was prompted to do without realizing what s/he was actually doing.

    Speaking of google+, it went and pulled all the photos from my blog the other day and added them to my + account. THAT did not make me happy.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Uh oh. Thanks for the head's up, Andrew. I'm going to have to check the Google + account I set up but never use...

    I hate it when blogs have the word verification. I mean, why? And Disqus makes me crazy.

    Technology creates as many problems as it solves.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I try to make things as easy as possible for my blog visitors. No captchas. No busy sidebar that will slow down the page. All links there for people to find me.

    Sometimes I try to comment back and it's hard finding a person's blog. I have to look through their Google profile, since that's their link. Also, on regular Blogger profiles, some people have more than one blog listed. Out of five blogs, only one is recent.

    Another one of my pet peeves is when music and videos start automatically. I don't care to visit those pages again.

    ReplyDelete

Please validate me.