Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, in 2015. Photo / Getty Images
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, in 2015. Photo / Getty Images
The British National Rail service offered a bizarre tribute to Prince Philip over the weekend, stripping their website of colour and switching to greyscale as a "mark of respect":
The 'greyscale' National Rail website.
Those on social media and a leading sight charity soon pointed out the accessibility issues with the "tribute", which left partiallysighted people struggling to navigate the website and book train tickets.
The National Rail website has been temporarily greyscaled as a mark of respect following the death of HRH Duke of Edinburgh. We are listening to feedback about how people are using the website and are making further changes today to make it more accessible to all our customers.
"This isn't nearly enough. The public demand that all the trains in the country are painted grey as well. Also, can all drivers and conductors have sad faces all the time. Nothing less will suffice," one person on social media joked.
Writer Owen Jones called the tribute "incredibly weird behaviour," while another person said the move showed "the UK has completely lost the plot."
"I wish I could have been in the room with the genius who suggested grayscaling the website. And whoever signed off on it," wrote another.
The website has now been switched back to colour.
It comes as the BBC has been flooded with over 110,000 complaints about the wall to wall coverage of Prince Philip's death. But many viewers were left fuming after their favourite shows – including the MasterChef final – were ditched so special tribute programmes could be laid on.
National rail have coloured their entire website grey to "mourn Prince Phillip", rendering the whole website completely useless to people with visual impairments. The UK has completely lost the plot pic.twitter.com/5OKWAFXDWR
— socks is socially distancing (@carseatarmrest) April 11, 2021
As a mark of respect for Prince Philip, National Rail have made their employees unable to read the National Rail timetable pic.twitter.com/yyl7OXbF5L
This isnt nearly enough. The public demand that all the trains in the country are painted grey as well. Also, can all drivers and conductors have sad faces all the time. Nothing less will suffice.
