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According to this NZ Herald story there's an arguable case there's a legal requirement for some (if not all) Kiwi websites to be designed with the navigational needs of the disabled in mind.

Of course this isn't an issue when a website is properly designed to start with - but those fools who build entire pages out of Flash and/or use graphic elements for menus with no ALT tags might be in big trouble.

I've long been a fan of all websites having a link with the words "text only" as the first element of every page.

Clicking on that link ought to take you to a page that can be navigated easily by those using text-only browsers or text to speech conversion software. Unfortunately this can be a lot of extra work and becomes very hard to justify.

Now have your say Got something to say about today's column, or want to see what others think?  Visit The Forums While you're here, why not visit the Aardvark Hall of Shame and perhaps make your own nomination.

So, once again, the best option is generally to ensure that your website has plenty of text-based navigation elements built in and that key information is also presented as ASCII text rather than fancy graphics or Flash.

The other story that caught my eye this morning was the news that Trade and Enterprise appear to have infringed the effective trademark of a smaller operator by registering the name newzealandfocus.com.

It's been reported that the domain newzealand-focus.com had been registered seven months earlier by an operator who built what they claim to be "one of the best-known NZ tourism portals" (now at pleppin.co.nz).

What's going on here?

On the face of it, Trade and Enterprise should get a right royal kick up the backside for cybersquatting. It's obvious that there would be very clear confusion generated by the use of this newly registered name -- bad form!

Of course I'm left wondering why the owner of newzealand-focus.com didn't simply register newzealandfocus.com themselves to protect the domain - that would have made a lot of sense.

It's clear from this page however, that the folks on whom Trade and Enterprise have stomped, are not best pleased about the situation.

The problem is that successfully suing for an infringement of your defacto trademark/domain name can be a very expensive operation -- especially when the defendant will be using your own money (tax dollars) to defend against you.

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