Ok so ive been busy and its been a littlew whil since I have written a blog. But I want you all to get as mad as hell, stand up and shout - "I hate web ads with annoying sound effects" Im going to give this Tasbo to two in particular, the first is to the ubiquitous IMVU, I can live with the vaguely distasteful imagery of avatars in romantic clinches, but I cant live with the constant interference with my web browsing by your irritating sound effects, I dont need to have my attention drawn to the page by your noises. I was sitting browsing, a pop up window opened and these effects started. I searched desperately around the page trying to close it, before finding it was hidden a couple of layers down in another window. Just plain irritating. Actually another was worse, I browsed a TV listings page, the same advert appeared in three places on the webpage, everytime I silenced one ad another started its banal sounds. Two of those ads I needed to find by scrolling to the lower section of a page to mute them as they couldnt be seen initially.
So they are bad enough, but there is someone worse, Chevrolet have started an ad campaign online for their Malibu range. Apparently the car has a remote controlled ignition. To prove this they have created a banner ad featuring a remote control and a car. Every 15 seconds or so the car pretends to start up with a crashing sound, muting the ad seems to make no difference as it refreshes regularly and starts all over again
These are irritating enough as it is, but are far worse for screenreader users, I can mute the whole PC, they need audio to follow the main content. Imagine that every time you read a book someone came an poured paint on your page to make it more difficult
These audio polluters are just bad news, irritating to all, and a real hazard to some. Lets get rid of them or at least have a browser setting that says mute webpage sound effects
Till the IMVU and Chevrolet consider yourself Tasbo'd