It is essential that websites be accessible in order to provide equal access and equal opportunity to people with disabilities.  Website accessibility is required by laws and policies around the world; however, making your web pages accessible is not only a good idea, but it's good for business. People with disabilities represent an important demographic group and improving accessibility increases the likelihood you will capture this demographic group as customers.

There a few simple things that can be implemented on any website to improve its accessibility.  These include:

1. Images & animations: Use the alt attribute to describe the function of each visual.
2. Image maps. Use the client-side map and text for hotspots.
3. Multimedia. Provide captioning and transcripts of audio, and descriptions of video.
4. Hypertext links. Use text that makes sense when read out of context. For example, avoid "click here."
5. Page organization. Use headings, lists, and consistent structure. Use CSS for layout and style where possible.
6. Graphs & charts. Summarize or use the longdesc attribute.
7. Scripts, applets, & plug-ins. Provide alternative content in case active features are inaccessible or unsupported.
8. Frames. Use the noframes element and meaningful titles.
9. Tables. Make line-by-line reading sensible. Summarize.

Once you have created your website validate your site to make sure it meets accessibility guidelines.  You can use tools, checklist, and guidelines available at http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG. Other tools you can use include:

• A-Prompt "A-Prompt (Accessibility Prompt) is a software tool designed to improve the usability of HTML documents by evaluating Web pages for accessibility barriers and then providing developers with a fast and easy way to make the necessary repairs."
• Cynthia Says "Cynthia is a web content accessibility validation solution, it is designed to identify errors in design related to Section 508 standards and the WCAG guidelines. The main purpose of this portal is to educate web site developers in the development Web Based content that is accessible to all."
• The Wave Another excellent tool to check accessibility.

Labels: accessibility, testing

One of the biggest problems with the internet it the wide array of browsers and devices that your site can be viewed on.  A website that looks lovely on your browser can look bad (very bad) on a different browser.  Some of the problems you can see as you move from browser to browser may include having elements on your page overlap or having content wrap strangely.  Both of these flaws can make your site difficult to use or could even hide some critical parts of you page making your site difficult to navigate.

On of the first things you can test is that your web pages are validly constructed.  Having pages that are validly constructed helps improve the odds that your page will display correctly.  Unfortunately, just because they validate doesn't mean they will look good in different web browsers. Here are tools to test the appearance and validate the code.

• CSE HTML Validator Lite They bill it as "...the most powerful, easy to use, and user configurable HTML, XHTML, CSS, link, spelling, and accessibility checker available for Microsoft Windows."  It's free, but it's fairly limited. If you're a serious designer, you should at least get the standard version (at $69).
• BrowserCam It's not free and it's only cheap if you use it for one month to check out your site (if it takes longer than that...).
• LynxViewer is a service that allows web authors to see what their pages will look like (sort of) when viewed with Lynx, a text-mode web browser.

Using these tools can help you insure that your website looks good in a variety of browsers on a variety of platforms. It is the first step in an effective website testing program.  Other things to test include usability testing, accessibility testing and content testing.  I will discuss these types of testing in future blog posts.

Labels: testing, tools, website tips