I don't mind a bit of design, as long as the design is fully functional for EVERYONE that needs to use it. Yes, that means people using older browsers/machines

I don't mind a bit of design, as long as the design is fully functional for EVERYONE that needs to use it. Yes, that means people using older browsers/machines, users with restricted vision, anyone that requires access to a council website, or requires information about council services. On IE7, this website works, but it takes a very long time to load, probably because the home page is 1MB, with just under 950k of this being images, and this isn't acceptable. The average user couldn't care less if the site looks nice, or is aesthetically pleasing, or if they are using a browser that StatCounter claim is at 1% worldwide. They want their information. I picked up a council project a few years ago, where an agency had built a nice looking website. However, it had not been tested using screen readers or tested using a focus group. After a few months they had received complaints about users using screen readers not being able to read the pages regarding council services for visually-impaired people.