Better by design
- Article 9 of 26
- M-iD, October 2004
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Technically, the biggest improvement that any web site owner can make to a web site to make it more accessible, easier to maintain, better looking and more compliant with legislation is to separate the content and the presentation of the site using cascading stylesheets (CSS), a now-standard web technology.
Stylesheets are separately downloadable documents that web pages can reference, which contain information about the fonts, colours, sizes and positions of elements in the page. By storing this information in a separate file, a consistent look can be maintained across the site, since the information does not need to be repeated and updated in every file and web pages will be smaller because they no longer contain formatting information. Stylesheets also provide far greater control over the look of a web page than simple HTML alone.
Employ iterative testing
Once a basic design has been developed, iterative testing should advance the design of the site step-by-step. "Rather than decide what the site should look like at the beginning then develop it, it's better to 'iterate' the site using cheap design methods and try to get as many users involved in testing those prototypes up to the final build," says John Knight, director of interaction design at Usability Labs at the Birmingham Institute of Art and Design.
"You're more likely to build sites that users find intuitive because they'll have been involved in it, the structure and the architecture," he says. "People in development teams tend to have enthusiasm for a particular technology or design aspect, such as a new kind of search. All of the resources get put into developing this feature, but actually no one wants to use it."
Ideally, disabled users should also play a part in the testing, but if it's not possible to find anyone willing to take part, automatic tools such as Bobby is able to check coding to ensure it does not breach any accessibility guidelines.
Testing the site with different platforms and browsers will also ensure that as many people as possible can view the site. Writing the HTML to the latest standards - HTML 4.0 or XHTML - will future-proof the site as best as possible.
Realise, an Internet services company, has a standard build for its PCs which covers 95% of users' browsers. "We have Internet Explorer 5 and above on the PC, as well as Mozilla and Netscape," says Andrew Craig, creative director at Realise. "On the Mac, we only test on the most popular, which are Safari and IE 5.2. There's always going to be some strange user with Netscape 1.0, but to make it work on those types of browsers will quite considerably restrict you in terms of coding and what the site looks like."
Realise varies the build according to the browser distribution of users in the expected demographic; with sites for schools, for example, the company performs more Mac testing, reflecting their greater prevalence in education.
Don't stop at deployment
Deployment should not be viewed as the end of a site's development, however. A style guide that lists procedures for users so that content and design remain accessible and within the organisation's intentions is a must.
This should be a constantly evolving documentation of procedure, so that as staff come and go, procedures are not forgotten and those that do not work are not continued.
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