Shut up brain, before I stab you with a Q-tip

So, is it just me, or is the NFL.com website slowly backsliding to something more fitting c.2009? This is an organization that netted something like $9.5B last year. First off, I’m sort of blow away that the homepage isn’t responsive (that’s not to say it’s not mobile friendly - mobile devices get kicked to m.nfl.com). The new, dark background really makes you feel the claustrophobic use of a fixed width layout that uses internal white space barely adequately. There’s virtually no context for elements in the sidebar, with ads visually blurring together with features and headlines of a random sort. The body is just a giant, random assortment of articles from different categories, inexplicably broken up occasionally by a horizontal video block or tweet. In the end, I’m sort of shocked that THIS is the best the NFL can do with their home page, because in my humble opinion, this is pretty much just awful. It’s not even helpful as a news site, because the information is so random.

This is one of the more strangely creepy splash images on a website I’ve seen.

This is all that’s on the BuffaloBills.com homepage. So I guess if you don’t want a jersey, or season/club tickets, you’re just screwed. Unless you just click randomly and discover their little logo at the bottom is the key.

The mobile site is just as bad. Basically just a news feed - no schedule or stats or anything else, and no way to go to the desktop homepage if you’re on something like a tablet. If the site thinks you’re “mobile,” it utterly traps you.

Okay JCPenny, this is your homepage. What the hell am I supposed to do with this? I’d love to know how you’re measuring the efficacy of this as your main focal point. Then for kicks, I clicked one of the things on the calendar and ended up at the second page. Nothing about this feels like a good idea to me.

Does no one understand why this could be construed to be confusing page navigation?

I’m disappointed that it’s nearly 2012 and this is the best that Amazon can do presentationally with these “letters” from Jeff Bezos.

Sprint trying to take simple, straightforward, audience segmentation seriously as part of their initial UX navigation.

Joshua Dodson conducted a video interview of Michael Fienen and Dylan Wilbanks on the topic of web accessibility and usability.

Michael is the Director of Web Marketing at Pittsburg State University as well as a writer for .eduGuru and the CTO of nuCloud.

Dylan formerly worked as a web developer and designer at the University of Washington School of Public Health.

In the video below, Michael and Dylan offer a range of insights that are critical for higher education institutions to think about in terms of ongoing efforts to make their web sites accessible, usable, and useful.