Month: September 2019

Build Code With Accessibility

Posted on by admin

What is accessibility in web development? It means building websites that as many people as possible can use. Accessibility benefits everyone not only people with special needs. Have you tried to use your phone in outside in the side or with one hand? You may have given up or waited until later to do what you needed. If you have special needs, using an app or website can be a challenge. Accessibility means developing websites that people can use regardless of their physical and cognitive abilities. Or how they access your website.

Build Code With Accessibility
Photo by Zan Ilic on Unsplash

How do you build software with accessibility in mind?

In her talk at Dot Net Conference 2019, Rachel Appel explained how developers can build accessible websites without greatly changing how they code. People have variety of needs. When you develop, you need to make your code usable for people with a wide range of visual, cognitive, hearing and motor abilities.

Visual

People with visual issues include low vision, blindness and color contrast. Some people may use a screen narrator to help them navigate your website. For people using a screen narrator, use skip links. Skip links allow them to skip over the navigation and go directly to the content.

For making sure that your site is readable by as many people as possible, you can use Color Oracle, a free color blindness simulator. It is available for MacOS, Linux and Windows. You can also use Accessible Colors or WebAim’s Color Contrast Checker to ensure check your color choices.

Cognitive

People with cognitive difficulties includes learning and age-related issues. You want to keep things simple and clear. Write using short sentences, active voice and simple words. Use headings and labels to help people easily find information. See Mozilla’s Cognitive Accessibility for more tips.

Hearing

People have a wide range of hearing abilities. With videos or audio, you want to include transcripts and close captioning. In your software, don’t rely on sounds alone for feedback.

Motor

People with motor issues can have tremors, difficulty moving a mouse and more. Avoid pop-ups if you can. When you can’t, make sure that they can be closed easily. Use alt tags on all images that are not decorative.

By developing for a wide range of people, you make sure that your website is usable no matter how or where they access the web.

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4 Ways to Make Your Web Design Simple

Posted on by djbrensinger

What is simplicity? According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary, simplicity is the state of being simple, uncomplicated or uncompounded. A simple web design is uncomplicated. Minimalist design style is related to simple. It has only the necessary elements for functionality. A minimalist design can be simple, but a simple design is not minimalist.

4 Ways to make your web design simple
Image by Ambady Sasi from Pixabay

Is your website complicated or complex?

What makes it complex?

  • Too much content
  • Unnecessary design elements
  • It’s slow to load and hard to use

Why do you want your design to be simple?

A simple website is easy to navigate and use. It has the right number of design elements. A simple website loads faster and helps guide your customer to do what they want. It has content that is readable and scannable.

What can you do to make it simple?

Look at your content and ask is it necessary?
If not, remove it. If its, consider rewriting it. Use bullet points, shorter paragraphs and headings to break the text up. You don’t want to overwhelm people with a sea of text.

Review your site for extra design elements
Do you have colors, illustrations and photos that serve as decorations? If so, consider removing anything that is unnecessary.

Check for ease of use

  • Is your navigation bar complicated? Too many options can make it hard to use.
  • Do they need to go to multiple pages before getting all of the information that they need? Too many pages can make a simple design hard to use.
  • Are your forms easy to use? Complicated forms can make your visitors leave your website.

Look for items that slow your site down
Your photos, CSS, CMS and additional code can slow your website down. People won’t use your site if it is really slow. Use tools to compress and optimize your photos and CSS. Make sure your CMS is updated to the latest version. If you use any third party or custom code to extend your website, check if they are causing speed issues. See if you can get rid of the slow ones.

Simplicity is not a design style. Keeping your web design simple is hard. Websites change and evolve over time. You have to continually work to keep the design simple.