I was rung today by Friend's of the Earth (FOE) (an environmental campaign group in the UK) to update me on what they are doing, then to ask me for more money, and finally to ask me to go on to the web and join the Big Ask March. The online march is to put pressure on the UK parliament to pass strong environmental laws next year.

My Big Ask of you is to try and use the site and see the problems you have if you cannot use a mouse. I am using this an example of a badly designed web site in terms of accessibility. I apologise now to FOE for the bad publicity but I hope that will be balanced by a number of my readers joining the march. Just to show it can be done I will point you to another site that does it better at the end of this article.

The site is a useful example because it is small, relatively simple and has got some nice graphic design.

Go to www.thebigask.com and see how far you get without using the mouse, the tab key is your main navigation device. I am using Firefox on a Mac so the results you get may vary slightly.

The first page looks nice and the videos are fun and even informative. There is one problem if you are deaf—there are no sub-titles so you do not know what is being said. To fix this properly would be complex and as it is not essential to know what these people are saying we can forgive FOE for not producing subtitles, although it would not be difficult to highlight a couple that are subtitled or even someone signing.

OK, now start tabbing. Things look slightly different if you use IE7 or Firefox, but either way you will rapidly come to a link saying ‘join the march' so no problem so far, hitting enter will now take you to the next step. But before we leave this page what about the video and all the little pictures? As far as I can work out you can only reach these via the mouse.

But now we get to the meat of the problem; in the middle of the page is some text that explains the big ask. My screen reader does not read this information. Also there are two ‘buttons' ‘join now' and ‘email my mp' there is no way to get to those buttons except using a mouse and without being able to use either of those buttons you can go no further.

Remember people who are interacting with the computer via a screen reader do not have the option of using a mouse: also people who input information using a speech recognition technology find it difficult to impossible to simulate the use of a mouse, and other people prefer not to use a mouse because they have RSI or other upper limb disorders.

For the sake of this demonstration let us assume that you can use the mouse. Click on ‘join now' and you will be presented with a form. I hope your eyesight is good because the text is small and the normal text sizing options do not work here, if you are using IE7 you can increase the size of the whole page so you may want to do that but not everyone has IE7. Now click on ‘create your own animation' and you will have some extra areas to complete.

Start filling in the form, click into the field called first name and type. My natural reaction having typed ‘Peter' is to hit the tab to move to the next field and type my surname, but not on this form as it inexplicably jumps to the email field and if you keep tabbing you go round the fields of the form in a totally random order. Even for a dedicated mouse user this makes absolutely no sense. Also as the screen reader does not read out the names of the fields. It cannot be completed by a blind user.

Finally you are asked to type your message on to the placard in the animation. In this case I hope you have very good eyesight indeed and a very high-resolution screen, I cannot see this properly even with my glasses on.

Finally hit ‘join the march' and I am afraid in my case nothing happens. I get no response, it says it is transferring data but it never finishes. So if you look me up you will not find me amongst the marchers. I am sure this will get fixed but as far as I am concerned it is a totally inaccessible site in all senses.

The sad part about all of this is it would not have cost any more to build this site to be accessible than it did to build it the way it is. In the process FOE have lost an important part of the population who are just as passionate about climate change as any other group.

If you are passionate about the issue and you find it difficult to use the site please get a friend to help you and then tell FOE what you had to do.

If you are deaf, or even if you are a signer, please create a signed video, I am sure FOE would love to include it.

If you do not have a problem using the site and agree with the cause please join the march.

Finally I came across a somewhat less exciting site that is, however, designed to be accessible. Go to http://www.michaelpage.co.uk/ and start tabbing. Everything is accessible and logical. This shows it can be done.

I am now looking for an example site that combines some of the visual appeal of the big ask with the accessibility of Michael Page.