Website secrets/easter eggs and accessibility?

[shevek]

The past few days I've been thinking more about accessibility, but also hiding little secrets around websites.
Pages that are a bit hard to find, hidden symbols and text, hiding something in plain sight; maybe through not making it look as if it is clickable or focusable when it is, or other means. Not including it in your sitemap too, probably.

It seems like stuff that is harder to find on websites so it is a surprise or a secret people can find/"unlock" automatically means it is less accessible, because it leaves some people in the dark about it - intentionally so.

I was wondering if that is "fair", where you draw the line between secrets on your website and accessibility, when it becomes inaccessible and when secrets are too exclusionary. And is it a ""right"" people have that they should be able to find this, should secrets be super accessible, and when do they stop being secrets then?
I think it is interesting where the balance lies between having a little surprise for "dedicated" people on your site, vs. accidentally designing it in a way that completely excludes a group of people by default. What would you do?

[plantovision]

I think that the exclusivity of secrets is exactly what makes them special in the first place, and I don't think accessibility is a huge issue here so long as you aren't locking a large portion of your site behind difficult to access pages. That being said, I doubt very many people are secreting away huge chunks of their sites...

[akesi]

I've thought about this before, given that a big chunk of my website (maybe a third?) is hidden behind a secret (albeit one that's easy to find). I want to give people a moment of discovery and surprise, and I'm a huge fan of labyrinthine website design. But I also would like anyone who wants to look for it to be able to find it.

My big secret involves some javascript & interactivity, but I also have a few alternate routes that are just certain words that are hyperlinked despite not looking like it. And the thought is that if someone's using a screenreader, they'd actually have an easier time knowing it's a link (given that it would be labeled as such).

Like, in general, I think it's okay and fun for there to be deep secrets on a site that almost no one can ever find. But the key is to try and design them in a way that anyone could find them.

[Gans]

No right or wrong. If I'd be a company that's listed on the stock eychange, I'd think twice. But else, freedom rules in the webspace to deliberately mess up the user experience.

In games, easter egg masterpieces are hard to find, but they don't ruin the game if they aren't discovered. Could be applied to websites too. Just make your site not depending on the easteregg...

In my view, Javascript has no business on a website, there is a funny quote hidden inside a <noscript> tag on my site. Usually, you'll find some line in a <noscript> tag telling the user that JavaScript is required. But I encourage the user, giving him thumbs up for disabling JavaScript! Haha!
<noframes> could be used as well. Text browsers like Lynx display that specific line.