Silly Odeon

UK cinema chain Odeon has one of the world’s ghastliest websites. Said ghastly website is also illegal, since it doesn’t meet the Disability Discrimination Act’s standards (being only accessible through MSIE).

Public-spirited ubergeek Matthew Somerville created an accessible site last year, which scraped the listings information on the useless site and presented it in a useable format.

A year later, Mr Somerville has received not one, but two semi-comprehensibly worded letters from Odeon’s marketing director, Luke Vetere, demanding that he remove the accessible site. These strongly imply that Mr Vetere either has no understanding either of online marketing or the Data Protection Act (both somewhat crucial to his job role, one might have thought), or is acting on orders from someone with no understanding of them.

Anyway. Email Mr Vetere and tell him what you think of his company’s policy (here’s my effort). Email Mr Somerville and tell him what you think of his plans. Should you (or someone you know) be unable to use the ghastly Odeon website for disability reasons, I’d also recommend getting in touch with the Disability Rights Commission.

The most boggling thing about the whole debacle is Mr Vetere’s claim that Odeon has “received an increasing number of complaints from customers about [Mr Somerville’s] website”, and the potential privacy risk it’s brought. Even if ‘increasing” means ‘increasing from 0 to 1’, this still means that some cocklord was sufficiently incensed by the possibility that Mr Somerville could have illicitly obtained details of which films s/he likes to make a complaint to Odeon…

Actually, I suspect the relevant person complained with a letter saying something like “I’d like to complain about your appalling website. At first I thought this good website was your website, but then I realised it wouldn’t sell me tickets. Then I went to your website, and it was rubbish”. You don’t get to work in marketing without being devious. Which is lucky, since most people who work in marketing have no other obvious skills.

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5 thoughts on “Silly Odeon

  1. Followed your link in my comments section to here. Don’t get me wrong, I think Marketeers are devious people and I don’t think it’s especially fantastic to make a living convincing people to buy things they don’t really need. That said, I’d be good at it and my moral scruples must be weighed against my need to make a living. Also, I don’t think there are many jobs that don’t involve getting money off someone, somewhere. I’ve actually sent an e-mail to Odeon myself.

  2. Odeon’s actions are shocking, I’m surprised that they actually have the legal power to get a disabled boys computer project unloaded from the worldwide internet system. I read elsewhere that he was made to put all his work in the recycle bin as well. Did it have a virus on it or something?
    Anyway, to pick on the disabled simply isn’t on.

  3. Well, the Odeon website works fine for me. Have they copied the disabled boys work (surely that would also be against the internet law! You cannot have it both ways), or have they finally got around to updating their site? Here in the US, there would be many disabled and Jewish charities who would help fight a case like this. The local networks would run and run with a story like this – with some sad pictures of the disabled boy, next to his computer with a blank screen.

  4. Is he disabled or not?
    Is he pretending to be disabled?
    I’m very confused reading about this story.

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