Melvin (nba.com)
This is the website for the National Basketball Association (NBA). The verbal text is obviously geared toward the fans of the NBA, using lingo that applies to the league and the game itself. The verbal text and the semiotic dimensions of the site complement each other because it is setup in a way that combines the language of the sports community with visual images (including pictures, graphs, statistics, and videos) in a way that is appealing to the common NBA fan. The site includes news, transactions, player movement, schedules, and other information that is applicable to fans following teams and individual players. The modalities contribute to the site’s accessibility with video and audio clips of highlights and press conferences. It is not entirely accessible to people with visual or hearing impairments, but some of the audio can be useful. The size of the text can be adjusted through the browser settings, but it is not a modification enabled specifically by the nba.com website. Some key information on the website can be accessed through audio clips, but navigation to those clips can prove to be a problem for a person with a visual impairment. However the site does provide a schedule of upcoming games that are broadcasted on TV. All games include live commentary, which makes enjoying the games much easier for people with visual impairments. Another feature that is pretty useful is the NBA.com Audio League Pass, which broadcasts audio play-by-play action for every game, every night.
posted by mILLionbILLion at 6:13 PM
1 Comments:
Your analysis of the way the NBA site uses multimodal features to convey a range of information to its visitors is smart and concise. I especially appreciate your awareness of how people with hearing and visual disabilities might be shut out from particular offerings on the site, but you also show how these constraints might be compensated for by the variety of modes through which users can get information about the sport.
You're also right about the targeting of the language itself--it's appealing to a sense of common knowledge among basketball fans, which is an important aspect of an ethical appeal insofar as it reduces the rhetorical distance between the site's authors and the audience.
Like many sites others have discussed, this site offers "services" in addition to the information users can access here. The play-by-play commentary on games is one example. We're seeing a move to more robust online services in a number of different industries, and media are converging on the web, which now can provide sports fans with experiences similar to radio and television.
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