springB @ UVA

Web Design - Best Practices for Accessible Sites

Best Practices, at the Macrolevel:

1. Design for your audience - 10 guidelines for user-centered design
2. Design for multiple browsers - NetMechanic tutorial
3. Design for multiple monitor sizes - CSS Layout Gala, Liquid round corners tutorial
4. Design for multiple entry points
5. Write for the Web - How users read on the web
6. Optimize images for the Web - AKSI tutorial
7. Optimize for search engines - Google Webmaster guidelines, Web-Source tutorial, Wikipedia
8. Optimize for download speeds (code amount+images+script processing+Internet traffic)
9. Clean up your code - W3C Markup Validator, WebXact, NetMechanic HTML Toolbox)
10. Let the browser do the work for you

SitePoint.com has posted an FAQ on Web Design titled Bulletproof HTML: 37 Steps to Perfect Markup. It includes additional best practices, but beware of techno-speak.

Web Design is a skillset that includes:

• Graphic Design - layout, readability, visibility, pretty colors
• Information Architecture - navigation, organization
• Content - text and images formatted for the Web
• Coding - clean, valid markup

Web Design Resources:

- Robin Williams' Good Web Design Features and Bad Web Design Features
- Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design - Nielson's Alertbox
- Top Ten Web Design Mistakes of 2005 - Nielson's Alertbox
- WAI, 10 Quick Tips to Make Accessible Websites
- Web Style Guide, the Yale book
- Monash University's Web Style Guide
- Web Accessibility Myths - WebCredible's Resources
- Usability.gov - section 508

posted by springB @ 4:17 PM