Visiting the Museum of Death's Website 💀
And why it isn't accessible. Original email from May 15th, 2025
The first email I ever sent of this newsletter was on March 19th, 2024
The release date was five days after my birthday, when I sent it out as an experiment to see if it was something people ended up liking. Back then, I started with just a tiny number of subscribers, and so the vast majority of you have never seen it. And this issue is still really good despite being the first one I ever sent.
It was back when I posted twice a week before moving on to weekly to concentrate more on marketing efforts. I'll paste it (slightly formatted) as it was a year ago, then give any observations afterwards.
Without further ado...
WELCOME to the very first live email of this insane newsletter!
If you're receiving this, it means you're part of the inner circle of the very first people to be invited to this deranged thing I'm doing bi-weekly.
So it got me questioning... what would be a good first email to send to the lot of you? 🤔
I mean after all, it's the first one! It should be a good representation of the kind of emails you'll get and give you a small look into my weird way of looking at the world...
So after a bit of thinking, I've decided what the absolute best topic would be to hit things off.
Let's talk about death!! 🥳
Specifically about a place in California called "the Museum of Death".
Imagine a museum that goes into brutally descriptive details about cases of mass shootings, serial killings and horrific ways to die...
Showcasing what real crime scenes looked like when they were discovered...
And proud collections of the REAL weapons used during some of the worst killings you can imagine.
That's what the museum of death is, and how it was described to me by my sister, who personally went just a few days ago. I was fascinated by the concept, and so I did what any good frontend developer would do.
I checked out their website 😏
(After all that's what we're here for right?) So I googled it, found it through the first result and...
Giant skull image with blood spots all around in the background. (Decorative and very on brand.)
As you scroll down, there's options for purchasing tickets...
And then scrolling more down...
Merchandising!
Lots and uhh...
oh I guess lots of merchandising.
And...
I guess that's it for the homepage. My first reaction was very...
Meh 😒
I understand that the museum is all about not showing anything substantial, because the idea is you GO TO THE MUSEUM to see the graphic stuff.
But dude! Give me a description! Give me 5 reasons why I SHOULD go! Tell me something to be excited about wanting to go!
*Sigh*
Okay, the good news is, website is responsive!
Opening up dev tools you can play with the dimensions and it seems to play nice.
Awesome.
I then started tabbing around to see if anything broke and...
Oof... we got some accessibility problems.
For example, the links hidden inside the hamburger menu weren't highlighting or giving visual feedback...
For accessibility, when tabbing, the things you focus on with tab should be visually noticeable.
I also noticed a veery suspicious "accessibility" button in the top right, which opens up an accessibility overlay.
These... are usually horrible for accessibility 🤦♂️
They give you the ILLUSION that the website is accessible when it really isn't.
Also, the overlay itself kind of sucked 😅
All of this honestly, just got me thinking...
"Who did this anyway?"
And then at the bottom of the page...
Right where the footer is...
"The accessibility initiative?"
My curiosity got the better of me...
*Click*
Oh no...
"This... is hideous"
It's a website with NO colors, OVERSIZED images and NO CSS!?!
"How is this an actual service? Let alone a website certification?!?"
And then a revelation hit me.
"Is... is THIS site accessible?!?" 😱
I open up the accessibility checker extension I have...
Click on the "check" button with shaky hands and...
"OKAY, IT'S MOSTLY ACCESSIBLE"
Phew!
I would have been SHOCKED if it wasn't.
But still... very misleading service.
And still a very ugly page 😄
But don't take my word for it, check it out for yourself
https://hikeorders.com/accessibility/home/
As you can tell, I abused the "scrolling down the email for suspense" concept in my writing a lot 😅
(To be fair, I still think it's funny and even play around with it in the Exceptional Frontend about page!)
What's fun about revisiting this site a year later is that the accessibility problems I outlined are still there. Nobody has fixed them. And yet, many people might believe it's accessible because there is an "accessibility button" and it's "certified by an accessibility company".
Yeah right 😂
Something else funny I can add here is that the original hikeorders link in the email led me to a broken website with the styles completely messed up. (Which I show off by using a Wayback Machine link in the original email.)
Today, the website looks fine and is presentable (which means I probably landed on it at a time when something probably broke).
But you know what is STILL funny?
If you go to the Museum of Death website, scroll to the bottom, and click on the accessibility initiative button...
You'll land on the hikeorders website, with a modal that you can't close using the X button 😄