MySpace and Its Inaccessibility
MySpace was the most popular social networking site in the United States back to 2007. Although with similar functions, it attracted more people than Facebook did. However, because of its unwillingness to facilitate a greater level of inaccessibility, it now has fewer users than Facebook does. With the same problem that Facebook had, MySpace had documented accessibility problems so that "people who have vision impairments and cognitive disorders as well as people who have migraine headaches and epilepsy found it hard to access to MySpace" (Disability and New Media, Ellis, Katie, Kent, Mike). As MySpace, which is a social network site that is supposed to build connections, excluding disabled people from using the site was a great failure.
A problem that I think is worth to mention is the bargain between the benefit of the general public and the normal functions of the website for disabled people. It is noted that MySpace had a special feature that users select music to automatically load when other people navigate to their page. However, the automatic loading of audio disrupts screen readers when they attempt to navigate a page and breaks the rule of creating an accessible page. Thus, MySpace had to face the tradeoff of the gains of the general public and disabled people. In this case, MySpace decided to get the approval of the general public on the expense of the accessibility of disabled people. In my opinion, this was not a just action. People without disabilities already enjoyed a lot of features that the site provided. Only by adding the background music will not attract more users and neither will it increase people’s engagements with MySpace. At the same time, this action led millions of visual-impaired people inaccessible to MySpace. Compared with the loss of disabled people, the gain of the general public was not successful but rather pathetic.
MySpace was the most popular social networking site in the United States back to 2007. Although with similar functions, it attracted more people than Facebook did. However, because of its unwillingness to facilitate a greater level of inaccessibility, it now has fewer users than Facebook does. With the same problem that Facebook had, MySpace had documented accessibility problems so that "people who have vision impairments and cognitive disorders as well as people who have migraine headaches and epilepsy found it hard to access to MySpace" (Disability and New Media, Ellis, Katie, Kent, Mike). As MySpace, which is a social network site that is supposed to build connections, excluding disabled people from using the site was a great failure.
A problem that I think is worth to mention is the bargain between the benefit of the general public and the normal functions of the website for disabled people. It is noted that MySpace had a special feature that users select music to automatically load when other people navigate to their page. However, the automatic loading of audio disrupts screen readers when they attempt to navigate a page and breaks the rule of creating an accessible page. Thus, MySpace had to face the tradeoff of the gains of the general public and disabled people. In this case, MySpace decided to get the approval of the general public on the expense of the accessibility of disabled people. In my opinion, this was not a just action. People without disabilities already enjoyed a lot of features that the site provided. Only by adding the background music will not attract more users and neither will it increase people’s engagements with MySpace. At the same time, this action led millions of visual-impaired people inaccessible to MySpace. Compared with the loss of disabled people, the gain of the general public was not successful but rather pathetic.