Tag: web design

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Website design accessibility

1. Does My Website Have To Be Accessible in 2008?

You do have a responsibility at some level, whether or not you are the designer or the commissioner of the website, to ensure your website design does not discriminate against disabled visitors to your site.

2. So what happens if your website design is not accessible?

Unsurprisingly, you leave yourself open to criticism, bad press and and more seriously legal action if your site is not accessible.

3. What level of compliance should your website design meet?

No case has been brought to court in the United Kingdom to date, so there is no case law guidance. In any event, case law can only provide broad guidance – what websites have to do may vary from site to site. What is important, however, is the outcome: the DDA requires that you make what it refers to as “reasonable adjustments”, to your services to ensure that a person with a disability can access that service. This means making changes to websites – which offer 24 hour service, and a variety of features not available via, for example, a telephone service – so that disabled people can use them.

4. Web Accessibility Opinion

Basically, you need to make sure your site is built to W3C standards for good website design. That means valid html and valid css. It means passing Priority 1 W3C WCAG (Google it!) at least. It means well formed website code (i.e. without errors) and simple and correct use of technologies. Actually – this is fairly simple to do for an experienced web designer – do not accept that you need to pay more for accessible web design – it should come as standard, part of good practice web design. You could go one step further and ask “vision impaired” testers to test drive the site. Finally, you need to listen to your web site visitors. If someone contacts you about the inaccessibility of your web site – then fix it!

There’s a business case and moral obligation to make your site as accessible as you can. There are over 8 Million people registered as having a disability in the UK, and a lot of them use the net – do you really want to ignore them? Prosecutions have been successful in Australia and the US – it will happen in the UK, just not any time soon – so don’t worry too much about prosecution – and don’t listen to the snake oil salesman who want your hard earned cash for total website redevelopment!

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Good Web Design

What makes a good web design?

The first thing visitors should see is an inviting home page. That initial window must give the visitor a reason to stay and read more. Your home page is your business’s front door. It should say “come in and stay, look around, I offer something that you want!”

An inviting page includes:

  • an attractive header and a well crafted tagline that quickly identify the business or organization and its purpose
  • a carefully chosen color scheme
  • navigation “the menu” that clearly helps the visitor find what he or she is seeking
  • a visually balanced web design page and an effective presentation of information

What makes a site user-friendly?

  • logical site organization
  • a navigation system (menu) that is immediately understandable
  • inner pages are found easily with a minimum of clicks
  • links, and where they lead, are identified clearly by color and wording

Websites should be designed for their audience. Think about who is going to be using your site, and what they will need to see in order to want your service or product.

What about readability?

Most people read about 25% slower from the screen than from print. Perhaps one fifth actually read word by word; the rest scan web pages quickly. Content on website pages should have:

  • high contrast between text color and background in your web design
  • short paragraphs
  • pages not longer than 2-3 screenfuls
  • line lengths – about 12-15 words, or 65-70 characters
  • headings and other cues that lead the viewer’s eyes through the text

Colors of text and background should have high contrast for the greatest readability.

Patterned backgrounds can make reading on-screen more difficult.

The content should be well written and concise. Writing on-line has different impact than writing on hard copy.

Quantity is not better, the average person reading on a monitor screen will remember only 15% of what they see, compared to 60% from a printed page. Make every word count. Avoid long pages of paragraph after paragraph. Use bulleted lists to highlight key information. Well chosen graphics and photos add interest. Meaningful headings and sub-headings identify sections and help the reader’s eye move down the page.

How many graphics should be used in my web design?

That depends: photos and clip art should be chosen because they enhance the content, not simply for their own effect. Again, quantity does not guarantee a positive result. Graphics should be optimized so that file size of each page + images is not too big. Image rich pages lead to longer download times.

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The Reasons You Need to Learn WordPress

 

Nearly ten or more years back, WordPress was just considered a blogging software. That was back in a time when a blog was still known as a “weblog”. Really don’t really know why we had to separate such web-blogs from other blogs…?

 

TIP! Design your website so that it will please the eye and be simple for users. If your site is difficult to use or unattractive, people won’t stick around.

Today, WordPress is a large leader of website abilities. Considering that the individuals who really don’t know one piece of programming language can easily layout and build custom-made websites, it’s quite fantastic! WordPress requires absolutely no coding, at least not on the front-end. It has developed a gigantic market place where one is able to find any kind of design, and plug-in desired. WordPress is presently being used in many various facets. From a 5 page site for my favorite Thai spot down the street, to a enormous eight-thousand page ecommerce website where I purchase all my vitamins and minerals (working on my six-pack even as I write this!).

 

For the individual just starting in the web-world, WordPress needs to be the top choice.

You’ll find so many web sites offering learn to use wordpress tutorials available on the net. A basic Search will bring up several potential lessons and lessons.

 

No Coding Knowledge Necessary

 

TIP! A great tip for anyone looking to get into web design is to use some of the many resources out there. There is no shortage of books, magazines, and websites that will teach you about every aspect of web design, from the basics to advanced concepts.

In the old days, one would have to know code. Web sites are built in primarily html code. Then they’d need to master css in order to give it a good clean design. JavaScript (together with AJAX) is a useful component that allows for awesome things such as slide shows, form validation, and those wonderful facebook status updates!

That’s a great deal of language! Hugh! Exactly how is that practical for the newbie? Nuts!

Currently, however, things are different. There isn’t a need to learn all of the various languages. WordPress is point-and-click. Of course, it’s a good idea to learn the languages, but a complete amateur is light-years ahead than where they would be even 5 years ago. WordPress totally levels the playing field – no more code required!

If they know how to Point-and-Click, they are on their way!

 

 

WordPress Fan-domanium!

 

Can it be true? That somebody with no coding knowledge can sit down with WordPress and at the click of some buttons create a amazing web site?
How? Simply because WordPress has grown to be not just the preferred blog software in the galaxy, but they’ve also quickly develop into the leading preference for content management – which is a super elaborate word for website development.
Learning a tiny bit of the WordPress program is all a newbie truly needs.

TIP! Error check, or validate, your web pages to avoid problems. There are many WYSIWYG editors out there that add a lot of junk code to your site design.

If you are still unable to wrap your mind around it, think about this: there are tens of thousands of folks who are developing and coding small-scale bits of code specifically to be used in WordPress. And due to its drag-n-drop feature, users are able to implement them very easily without knowing how to code them into the web site – things are automatically coded.

Take a glance at a few of these Youtube . com videos that show just how easy it is to study WordPress. This particular video is named wordpress tutorials beginners youtube. Take a look!

 

The “F” Word!

 

For web sites to work, there needs to be a massive amount of coding. Thankfully, with WordPress, the actual coding has already been done.
WordPress is not just a weblog. It’s much much more. It’s most in-demand as a cms that helps businesses (and individuals) to market their own “whatever” on the interwebs. Many different kinds and genres of websites have been designed with the WordPress program.
With just a few key concepts locked away, even the inexperienced WordPress designer is able to tackle any assignment from uploading a family member’s blog, to creating a new site for a local business, to building a global e-commerce site. That is power!
Even the greenest of would-be developers may relax. WordPress really places them considerably in front of where an wannabe developer could have been even a half dozen years back.

 

Not understanding a single section of code, it is possible for a person to push a few mouse-buttons and come out with a incredible quality website. A site they could be paid for making on their own! Incredible exactly where we have now come in the world of technology today, don’t you think? Naturally, there’s a learning curve, but that curve isn’t as extensive and troublesome as it would be to have a seat and attempt to master 5 coding languages! All things about WordPress gives the user convenience and common sense ease, plus a substantial after-market of services that enable individuals to quite literally have absolutely no limit on what’s attainable. Think about learning WordPress today!.