Duke of Edinburgh dead.

[ProfessorDavey]

National Rail tweet

National Rail

@nationalrailenq

·

3h

The National Rail website has been temporarily greyscaled as a mark of respect following the death of HRH Duke of Edinburgh. We are listening to feedback about how people are using the website and are making further changes today to make it more accessible to all our customers.

I mean ... seriously This is just non-sense.

https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/national-rail-prince-philip-death-black-b1830023.html

Thankfully they seem to have seen sense and have gone back to the normal colour version.

[Robbie]

Are all the national rail customer service/IT people having a holiday today? Good for them.

I just went on there, looks like business as usual.

Good programme on London Live at 12 today about HRH, it was an old one but not very old. I hadn't seen it before. Unusual for me to watch TV during the day on my day off but I wanted to see the news and then browsed. I missed a bit because of a phone call but it will probably be repeated.

[ProfessorDavey]

I just went on there, looks like business as usual.

They've reverted back to the colour version presumably because of the backlash from those concerned about people with visual impairment ... and also because it is a really, really stupid idea. Utterly pointless.

[Robbie]

It was indeed, an utterly pointless gesture.
You could complain.

[jeremyp]

I read somewhere that people were complaining about that but there were loads of channels, free, that had other things on. I flicked through them on Friday night and had I not wanted to watch something about the Duke of Edinburgh, it wouldn't have been difficult to choose something else. As it was I really liked the programmes.

That's all well and fine and I don't begrudge you that, but the BBC ran exactly the same coverage on all of their channels except BBC4 and BBC4 they just c closed down altogether.

The radio was even worse. They broadcast exactly the same programming on Radios 1, 2, 3, 4, 4e, 5, 5e and 7. You can only watch one channel at a time. Why do they need to use all of them? It's ridiculous. In fact, as a supporter of both the BBC and the Royal Family, I found it embarrassing.

[Robbie]

We've been through that one jeremy  , read the whole thread!

[jeremyp]

I mean ... seriously This is just non-sense.

https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/national-rail-prince-philip-death-black-b1830023.html

Thankfully they seem to have seen sense and have gone back to the normal colour version.

That's interesting, if a web site is unusable without colour I would suggest it fails to meet accessibility requirements.

[jeremyp]

We've been through that one jeremy  , read the whole thread!

But the whole thing made me really angry. I'm a Royalist and a supporter of the BBC but now I've got to explain to all the Republicans who bring this up why we still shouldn't abolish both.

[ProfessorDavey]

That's interesting, if a web site is unusable without colour I would suggest it fails to meet accessibility requirements.

Why?

[jeremyp]

Why?

Because if you need colour to successful navigate a web site, it means colourblind people will have trouble.

[ProfessorDavey]

Because if you need colour to successful navigate a web site, it means colourblind people will have trouble.

No it doesn't - you simply need to be careful with your choice of colour. I've never heard any suggestions that a website must work in monochrome for accessibility reasons. The only reason why that might be the case would be for those with black and white monitors (are there any) or for someone who literally can only see in monochrome.

Actually the reverse is largely the case - that the use of colour (appropriately) improves accessibility.

[Anchorman]

No it doesn't - you simply need to be careful with your choice of colour. I've never heard any suggestions that a website must work in monochrome for accessibility reasons. The only reason why that might be the case would be for those with black and white monitors (are there any) or for someone who literally can only see in monochrome.
     


Actually the reverse is largely the case - that the use of colour (appropriately) improves accessibility.

     




RNIB conducted a survey amongst partially sighted and near blind computer users;
Few liked 'normal' screen colours.
The majority preferred a Verdana font with black background and either yellow or white letters.

[Robbie]

Double Eastenders last night to make up for Friday!

It would have been better for the BBC to put out a blanket announcement on Friday warning viewers and listeners that their usual prgrammes would be disrupted because of tributes to the Duke of Edinburgh who died that morning, but reassuring them it would be business as usual the next day. Then there would have been no complaints. Perhaps they'll have learned by now and will do that on Saturday, the funeral and commentary before and after is bound to monopolise all channels.

[Nearly Sane]

Double Eastenders last night to make up for Friday!

It would have been better for the BBC to put out a blanket announcement on Friday warning viewers and listeners that their usual prgrammes would be disrupted because of tributes to the Duke of Edinburgh who died that morning, but reassuring them it would be business as usual the next day. Then there would have been no complaints. Perhaps they'll have learned by now and will do that on Saturday, the funeral and commentary before and after is bound to monopolise all channels.

No, I would still have complained, and I suspect pretty much all the other people who did would have. I would have had no problem if BBC 1, BBC News, and Radio 4 had covered it throughout the day as they did.

[ProfessorDavey]

Double Eastenders last night to make up for Friday!

It would have been better for the BBC to put out a blanket announcement on Friday warning viewers and listeners that their usual prgrammes would be disrupted because of tributes to the Duke of Edinburgh who died that morning, but reassuring them it would be business as usual the next day. Then there would have been no complaints.

Yes there would have been complaints - the issue isn't the 'getting back to normal' tomorrow. The issue is that our, effectively publicly-funded broadcaster pulled all their content on pretty well every tv and radio channel and replaced it with either Duke's death-related content or nothing. That's what people were complaining about - the BBC over-reaching itself in folding into the establishment view. That things were back to normal (actually they weren't and aren't as there remains, in my view, excessive coverage etc of the Duke's death still) is irrelevant to the basic point of complaint.

And it would appear that the BBC got this very badly wrong - by a country mile the coverage generated more complaints than any other issue in the BBC's history which goes back to 1922, so just a tad younger than the Duke himself. How can they have got this so wrong.

[Gordon]

Double Eastenders last night to make up for Friday!

It would have been better for the BBC to put out a blanket announcement on Friday warning viewers and listeners that their usual prgrammes would be disrupted because of tributes to the Duke of Edinburgh who died that morning, but reassuring them it would be business as usual the next day. Then there would have been no complaints. Perhaps they'll have learned by now and will do that on Saturday, the funeral and commentary before and after is bound to monopolise all channels.

I'd still have complained.

The issue isn't that the story wasn't newsworthy and merited some coverage but that the BBC, by streaming the same feed simultaneously on multiple channels, didn't provide an alternative for license fee payers, and especially those who don't subscribe to cable TV or Netflix/Prime Video. That there are these alternatives is irrelevant to the decision taken by BBC management to indulge in an OTT exercise in sycophantic virtue signalling, no doubt in case they were ever criticised for not being sufficiently sycophantic (as was, iirc, the case when the Queen's mother died a dew years ago).

It's not just the BBC that are being sycophantic though - the moving of sporting events on Saturday, so that nobody is professionally kicking a ball or riding a racehorse while a certain family funeral is taking place, is also an overreaction

[SteveH]

I wonder when Madge will fall of her perch. If you think coverage of Phil's death is ott, wait till that happens!

[Gordon]

I wonder when Madge will fall of her perch. If you think coverage of Phil's death is ott, wait till that happens!

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/mar/16/what-happens-when-queen-elizabeth-dies-london-bridge

[jeremyp]

No it doesn't - you simply need to be careful with your choice of colour. I've never heard any suggestions that a website must work in monochrome for accessibility reasons. The only reason why that might be the case would be for those with black and white monitors (are there any) or for someone who literally can only see in monochrome.

Actually the reverse is largely the case - that the use of colour (appropriately) improves accessibility.

Oh yes, I forgot, Professor Davey is the fount of all knowledge and will not rest until he has made the entire internet aware of that fact even at the expense of derailing entire threads for pages and pages so that he can demonstrate his superiority even in areas he actually knows nothing about.

[SusanDoris]

But the whole thing made me really angry. I'm a Royalist and a supporter of the BBC but now I've got to explain to all the Republicans who bring this up why we still shouldn't abolish both.

Seconded.

[jeremyp]

I wonder when Madge will fall of her perch. If you think coverage of Phil's death is ott, wait till that happens!

I think they may err in the other direction. She'll probably get two minutes in the "and finally..." segment.

[SusanDoris]

No it doesn't - you simply need to be careful with your choice of colour. I've never heard any suggestions that a website must work in monochrome for accessibility reasons. The only reason why that might be the case would be for those with black and white monitors (are there any) or for someone who literally can only see in monochrome.

Actually the reverse is largely the case - that the use of colour (appropriately) improves accessibility.

I was advised by Dolphin from first using LunarPlus that to set the browser to 'ignore colours and fonts' makes it easier to navigate and the software to work. Whether the advice is still the same now with the latest SuperNova, I don't know, but it suits me. Photos and pictures are in colour although I can no longer see most of the colour, but the background is always white and fonts are always the same size and black.

[SusanDoris]

I'd still have complained.

The issue isn't that the story wasn't newsworthy and merited some coverage but that the BBC, by streaming the same feed simultaneously on multiple channels, didn't provide an alternative for license fee payers, and especially those who don't subscribe to cable TV or Netflix/Prime Video. That there are these alternatives is irrelevant to the decision taken by BBC management to indulge in an OTT exercise in sycophantic virtue signalling, no doubt in case they were ever criticised for not being sufficiently sycophantic (as was, iirc, the case when the Queen's mother died a dew years ago).

It's not just the BBC that are being sycophantic though - the moving of sporting events on Saturday, so that nobody is professionally kicking a ball or riding a racehorse while a certain family funeral is taking place, is also an overreaction

It certainly does make people like me quite embarassed and shows that those who have ordered this really ought to perhaps get a life or something!

[SteveH]

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/mar/16/what-happens-when-queen-elizabeth-dies-london-bridge

The Queen Mother died the day before Easter Day, which is Holy Saturday. Easter Saturday - more formally, Saturday in Easter week, - is the one afterEaster Day.

[SweetPea]

National Rail tweet

National Rail

@nationalrailenq

·

3h

The National Rail website has been temporarily greyscaled as a mark of respect following the death of HRH Duke of Edinburgh. We are listening to feedback about how people are using the website and are making further changes today to make it more accessible to all our customers.

Unbelievable. It gets crazier and crazier. All BBC newscasters, reporters even weather presenter have been told to wear black, rather the same way that they have to be seen displaying a poppy around Remembrance Day.