Not a pretty site

The USA’s new President owes his success partly to the web, say pundits. Julia Gosling and Elinor Grant of digital consultancy Fortune Cookie checked out the UK’s main political websites to see how they compared

Conservative Party (www.conservatives.com)
The homepage has a “modular interface” (think BBC), so it’s easy to see what’s offered at a glance. The site is modern and friendly and makes great use of video, but when it comes to accessibility, it’s a bit of a mess. A video in the middle of the homepage prevents keyboard users from getting any further into the site. We also had difficulty re-sizing the text.

Liberal Democrat Party (www.libdems.org.uk)
The site has an old-fashioned feel and with 14 options to choose from on the top level navigation it’s a little overwhelming. An irritating feature, if you have a cognitive impairment, is an area of text that changes every few seconds. There’s no way to stop this and screen­reader users only get to hear the text that appears initially.

Labour Party (www.labour.org.uk)
A bold design that is likely to engage and entertain visitors regardless of their political persuasion. On the homepage, though, is a huge block of auto-updating content that you can’t stop. It’s distracting and annoying. A large block of graphic text has a text description that doesn’t truly represent the content. The site also has lots of instances of unlabelled “input fields” (forms), so that screenreader users will struggle to interact.

Boris Johnson, London Mayor (www.boris-johnson.com)
A traditional blog-based site, with a simple structure that’s easy to browse. What it lacks in hi-tech it makes up for by talking directly to voters (asking for comments after every blog post). The tone of voice is friendly and open. On the downside, the email subscription area is positioned and styled in a similar manner to a search box, which must be confusing, as must the prominent advertising, which feels a little incongruous for a mayor.