Entries Tagged as “Accessibility”
Common Accessibility Mistakes
I gave a presentation at the Sacramento Web Standards Group about improving your sites accessibility. When I began the presentation I full expected to show lots of code. But what I ended up with was a list of common mistakes made when trying to implement accessibility into a site.
Little would I know that this list sparked some excellent conversation for the evening and maybe--just maybe--changed the way a few people create websites, and that is good for everyone.
So here is my general list of accessibility mistakes and a few ways to improve the overall accessibility of your site for everyone and not just disabled users.
→ Respond NowTags: Accessibility · usability
Standing Aginst Auto-Focus Inputs
In the last few months I have read a number of articles from some major sites that appear to promote or advocate the use of an auto-focus input when a page loads as a "technique to improve your user interface". The technique usually relies on some form of onload event for the body tag to set the focus to a search field or a login field.
I will say right now this is not a good practice at all. Unless your creating a site (or page) where the first task a user should take is to search for something or login, this is a very bad thing to do. This technique is one that I would personally lump in an article more appropriately titled "10 things to kill your user interface designs"
→ Respond NowTags: Accessibility · usability
Don't Be A Bad Javascript User
Let me start off by saying that this is not going to be a javascript bashing article. I don't hate javascript, in fact I really do like it a lot--- although the title of this article may seem to the contrary. There are many javascript libraries that do really cool stuff. I love that many of these scripts enhance webpages without requiring the use of flash.
The problem I have been encountering lately has more to do with the improper use or implementation of javascript. I think there is far to much whiz-bang stuff being added to many of todays modern websites without considering the impact on users. I feel it's important that before you add a script or a feature to your site that you stop and ask yourself: Is this thing I am about to add to a site going to help my visitors or hurt them? Does it add any value to for the user? Does it hurt them if it's not there? Will it only cause more confusion?
Rather than just talk about it, I have compiled a few video clips to help demonstrate some bad uses of javascript.
→ Respond NowTags: Accessibility · Code · usability
Mango Blog Comment Form Replacement
Mango Blog uses the same default code for it's comment form as wordpress. Although I have seen worse offenders, the current form does pose a few accessibility chalenges that I would prefer to fix. So this evening I set out to rework the comment form and try to make it more accessible and customizable. This is an early prtotype of a new form that I hope would become the new standard for mango blogs comment forms. Let me explain the challenges that I have identified with the current format, and why I have chosen the form design that I did. If anyone has suggestions for improvement please let me know.
→ Respond NowTags: Accessibility · Code · ColdFusion · Mango Blog · usability
Decrease your spam by address munging
I think we all would agree that spammers must die! Okay not literally, but the spam does need to stop. I recently closed down an email address that received over 5,000 junk emails a day. I had the address for the better part of 6 years or more. Part of the spam problem was created when I put my email address online unprotected. This is a common practice still employed today because many webmasters either don't know how to munge an email address or maybe it's just too much work.
I don't believe there is a silver bullet for becoming spam free. However, in the last year or so I have done two things to curb my spam. So far it has worked nearly perfectly. I now only see one or two emails a week that are junk mail.
→ Respond NowTags: Accessibility · General
