[King of Snake]

Hey I'm all for well-designed and easily accessible websites. I absolutely hate it when all kinds of pretty pictures and flashy animation and "clever" navigation gets in the way of me getting to the information. If I, as a non-visually impaired person, can't even get to the info I want someone isn't doing his job properly. And yes they should be (obviously) viewable in every browser.
That being said, being a dick about it isn't going to make it any better. Maybe wait until we actually have some final designs may be a good idea. I haven't really seen ayone here argue against good and accessible design so I don't really get what you're getting so worked up about.

btw let's also realise that most people are not webdesigners and don't know all the technicalities of standards compliance. Also, as you said probably most (all?) people here don't have visual defects so if you say that the news page has 200 problems I'm sure you're right, but to me (and others) it looks fine so I can't really criticise it.