On this page the following entries were made in the “June, 2007” time-frame. Need more? Check our Site Map.
Archive for “June, 2007”
Requirements? That’s Sooo ‘90s
Usability and accessibly must be passive to be truly successful. No requirements, no rules, no instructions.
In 1993, when I first started going on the web, I recall almost never being able to visit a web site without having to update a browser plugin or get some new funky thing. It was a real pain because what should have been a quick page load and content perusal ended up being a long process of downloading some update (on dial-up at the time), installation, re-booting, etc. By the time I got everything needed to visit the site in question, I had forgotten why I was checking it out in the first place. I remember that the web was quite aggravating in the ‘90s.
Continue reading “Requirements? That’s Sooo ‘90s” »
In Retirement Services
The In Retirement Services site is bright and cheerful with nice use of colours that has been re-developed from an existing site. Designed with the older user in mind, the site serves its target audience well with good clear navigation and supporting pages that offer practical user assistance. Some elements of the design are particularly notable. For example, even with images disabled, this site is still easy on the eye and pleasant to use. Meanwhile, look under the hood and you’ll find a site navigation menu that could be described as a model of usability.
Continue reading “In Retirement Services” »
Improving Accessibility through Typography
Among the many decisions you need to make when designing accessible web sites, typography seems to frequently be only shallowly addressed. Typography is rarely completely ignored — but it is greatly simplified, to a point that the issues raised don’t always complete the picture of accessible text. Accessible typography is commonly simplified to these three questions:
Continue reading “Improving Accessibility through Typography” »
KarovaHost
The Karova Host site is a good example of a Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) driven site with strong visual appeal. The grey, greens and black work well together and it’s not often you get so much attention paid to a footer. Colour contrast on links and footer text, however, needs improving. A nice logo shows that simple is usually best. Valid, well structured, code has been used with headings on menus which screen reader users will appreciate and definition lists, abbreviation and <address> elements show attention has been paid to detail. Image replacement has been used extensively in an effort to keep images in the CSS. However, whilst the intentions here are to be commended, the implementation has to be revisited. In some cases, users of text only browsers are served up with significantly less text than is in an image.
Continue reading “KarovaHost” »
