Tag: Design

It seems like a lot of work to make your web page accessible for people with sight impairment, and the audience seems small, but it is worth it. There are a couple of things that web developers often miss when they are evaluating such a task. If people cannot read the website, it is a good possibility that search bots and spiders from sites like Google and Yahoo will have difficulties too (although they have gotten better). By taking the time to properly plan out your site and take the time to follow the W3C standards, you should accomplish 90% or better of the goal to make your site accessible. Making your site accessible is easy and W3C publishes the guidelines.

Here are a couple of quick steps

1. Use “alt” tags on any content that is not text ( images or graphics
2. Use the title tags on your hyper links (a) type tags
3. Create a consistent page layout including heading, menus and content area
4. Where you use flash, or other plug-in framework, provide a text alternative with an easy and obvious link to it.
5. Tables should be laid out using the following

 <table>
   <caption>this is a table caption</caption>
   <tr>
       <th>column heading 1</th>
       <th>column heading 2</th>
   </tr>
   <tr>
       <td>column 1</td>
       <td>column 1</td>
   </tr>
</table>