Cookies and the acceptance dance
So when the whole cookie acceptance buttons came in I pretty much ignored them and accepted everything, I think like most users of the internet. Ignorance is bliss, yes?
Anyway for reasons I do not understand over the last week I have been doing the exact opposite and taking time to reject as many cookies as possible when I get to a site. And my experience has been interesting.
Some sites are very open, transparent and make it easy to reject all cookies. Just click on options or cookie settings and press reject all and then save. The site works as usual and you would never know the difference. But from my anecdotal evidence they are actually in the minority.
Some sites make it incredibly difficult to get to the cookie options to allow you to reject anything. In fact on one site I visited the only option was to accept the cookies. I could find no other options, so I left the site.
Other sites have a very small button to take you to the options, but they are there. Once you get there the buttons for each type of cookie are defaulted to reject and you just have to press save and exit. And that is where the first problem hits you. The accept all cookies button is a big green button (Usually) but the save options button to reject them is normally just the word Save in the same font as the text with no obvious button or link. They do however work.
One of the worst sites I visited had a tiny link to get to you cookie options which was smaller than the normal text. And then when you get to the options all of the cookie types are dfeaulted to accept. You have to go through each option and change it. But they were not simple check boxes, that would be too simple, you had to drag the option from the accept to reject for each cookie option.
At the end of all of this I wondered what the experience of these cookie acceptance forms were for those internet users having to use assistive technology, can’t be easy to get through this shit.