Website Accessibility

The American Foundation for the Blind has an accessibility section of their website that has many links to pages with tips a web developer can use for the best accessibility practices in their websites.

The American Foundation for the Blind

Website Usability

There are a lot of factors that determine good usability in a website. The link below is a great checklist to use when determining how website is being viewed by a user. The checklist, while concise, is a very comprehensive collection of usability tips to integrate into your site. The page also contains a downloadable .pdf of the checklist with a simple "good/fair/bad" rating system.

25-point Website Usability Checklist

New Logo!

I created a new logo in my class this evening. I will be using the logo on this blog and on anything else that absorbs ink...I'm kinda proud of it.

Best Practices in Web Design

Larry Lang at Designer Today has written an article that lists basic best practices for Web Design. The overall theme of the article is to keep things simple. Keep the navigation simple and uncluttered, keep the number of images low, keep the size of the images low as well, avoid long paragraphs so that the user feels like they're progressing through the website efficiently. A designer should also use w3.org to make sure the website conforms to internet standards, and they should test their site in different browsers for uniformity. The author advises that unless scripting is necessary it should be avoided because it can bog down the site and make it load slow.

This is a great article because it is short and to the point and can be a great design guide that every web designer should reference when creating a new site. Click the link below for the full article.

DesignerToday.com - Best Practices for Website Design