Embedding third party code: the downsides
I thought I should quickly acknowledge a few responses I’ve had to my previous post on using 3rd party plugins like Disqus and Echo, pointing out some of the downsides.
As well as this comment from Simon I’ve had two emails politely highlighting issues which – though nowhere near outweighing the benefits in my view (especially in the absence of cash to do much else) – should be a big enough deal to give pause to anyone wanting to copy the approach. So if my previous post was a bit one-sided, here are those downsides, loosely summarised as:
1. Accessibility
To quote Simon: “I dislike javascript-required solutions like this on principle; if it isn’t against the letter of the accessibility guidelines, I’d argue it’s certainly against the spirit.” This is well said, and I have to confess to not being completely sure how well or badly these 3rd party tools will behave with screen readers and other assistive technologies.
Thus far we have worked around it, making sure we offered an alternative way to respond online alongside our first Echo experiment (in this case using Surveymonkey). In light of the feedback I think we could go further, and regularly upload all published comments as a flat file so they’re readable even if javascript is disabled in the browser.
But to go further still, and get a clearer understanding of the issue, we’ve now also arranged for an independent accessibility audit of Disqus and Echo as implemented on the BIS website. (We’ll also give the once over to Steph‘s awesome Commentariat2 while we’re at it). I’m happy to share the results of this audit with anyone who is interested, and will most definitely share with Echo and Disqus themselves. There is nothing on either the Disqus or Echo websites about the accessibility of their products.
2. Quality
There are some quality issues with the implementation, certainly with Echo, and the potential for any 3rd party plugin to be not quite all that its shiny website claims it to be. We had one report of a user appearing to be logged in as several people other than himself, for example. So a note of caution to test any plugins thoroughly is probably as much as I need say here.
3. Privacy
Both plugins store users’ personal data overseas. It is important, then, to discuss your use of these kinds of tools with the people responsible for data protection within your organisation, and worth taking extra steps to make it clear to users that their use of the tool is subject to a third party’s privacy policy, not your own.
4. Retention
There’s a duty on public sector web managers to ensure content is archived for posterity, one which we take very seriously at our place. It’s not yet known how the National Archives crawler would cope with comments on Disqus and Echo but my money says it’s likely to fail. Our plan (as with accessibility) is to export the comments in an accessible format which can be uploaded to the website for full archival. Echo outputs CSV and Disqus spits out XML at the press of a button, so this is easy – as long as you remember to do it.
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I think that covers the biggies, but do let me know if I’ve missed something vital here. Being held to account like this is one of the reasons I bother to write this blog in the first place.
Image credit: Dmitry Baranovskiy
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Comments
@neillyneil in small (very small) way have struggled with embed tonight (audioboo into blogger) and I Do Not envy you your job. wonintendtho
Hi Neill – Thanks for taking the time to review and raise these issues.
With Echo, many customers chose to provide a static version of the content not just for accessibility reasons, but also for Google Crawler and non JS enabled browsers. This is a well supported option by us, we provide RSS feeds which can be parsed and rendered from the server side when the page detects such a case.
Unfortunately, though, without Javascript we can’t perform the kind of platform agnostic, real-time experience that we create.
I’m happy to continue the discussion offline and show you some stuff in our labs that I think you will really like.
Drop me a line!
Chris
VP Strategy, Echo
@neillyneil thats it. cheer me up why don’t you? haha. trouble is if i don’t repeat it for a week i forget how i did it. useITorloseIT eh?
Neil something I forgot to mention – there are other downsides to embeddable apps. Particularly those who appear ‘free’.
http://blog.aboutecho.com/2008/08/22/the-cost-of-free-widgets/
Chris – thanks for dropping by and commenting. RSS feed for non-js browsers sounds ideal; will dig into the help files and also take you up on the offer to discuss offline.
I think my unease with this is primarily because it’s something that should be straightforward to offer without resorting to questionable javascript-dependent solutions. It’s not the fact that you’re doing it that way; it’s that you have to do it that way.
If you take YouTube for example, that’s a third-party embed which (currently at least) requires additional proprietary technology. But there would be no sense whatsoever in any individual body offering a video streaming service; and even if they did, it wouldn’t be as good.
Enabling comments on a web page? Should be easy. But as we all know to our great cost, it (almost) never is.
RT @neillyneil: I done a blog: Embedding third party code: the downsides – http://neilojwilliams.net/missioncreep/2...
Hi Neil,
I think you’d asked us to respond to Disqus privacy / accessibility on Twitter..
Re: privacy, you’re right that a publisher should disclose our policies, but we don’t claim ownership to the data and provide the publisher full access to it via our admin panel, export function and API, so the onus is also on the publisher to make any IP/TOS and privacy guidelines of their own clear to the user.
Re: accessibility, the core functionality and benefits of Disqus do generally require Javascript, but we’ve invested quite a lot supporting a robust read & write API (http://groups.google.com/group/disqus-dev/web/api-1-1). We are continuing to do so too with a new version coming soon. We definitely believe in the ability for publishers, application builders and platform partners to easily access their data and our system. Would love any suggestions too from you or your community on what more we could do with our API to that end.
Hope that quick response is somewhat helpful, and do please share any feedback or findings per your post. Thanks!
Ro, DISQUS
[...] of months ago I posted in praise of cheap-as-chips comment engines Echo and Disqus – then followed up pointing out some of the potential downsides. Chief among them was accessibility, and I promised to [...]
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Hello, I'm Neil Williams. I'm a government web geek, a dad, a husband, a grower of veg, a keeper of hens and a lapsed comedy writer, roughly in that order. 
RT @neillyneil: I done a blog: Embedding third party code: the downsides – http://neilojwilliams.net/missioncreep/2...