Designing Accessible Websites
How DREN Does It
This website carries a variety of features for persons using assistive technology.
- Every peice of text will re-size to the setting the user chooses in their browser. Try it and see! Click on your View menu, and under the Text Size option, click on Larger or Largest. All the text on the page will instantly resize.
- Each page resizes itself to automatically fill the full width of the user's screen. So if they use a resolution of 800x600 or one of 1024x768 it will always make the most of the screen space available. No wasted space!
- The keyboard combination of Alt and Zero, Alt 1 and Alt 2 are consistently available to postion the user at the top of the main menus or the main article text space. For persons using screen readers (for example), it means they won't have to hit the Tab key dozens of times over to find their way back to the top of those main menus. They have quick access to what they need.
- The skip navigation keyboard combinations just desribed are one of the very first things the website user will hear presented to them as they enter any page.
- The text for clickable links throughout the website are always of an informative nature. We avoid using simple "click here" types of wording because that doesn't tell someone using a screen reader what the link is for. (More on that in another article!)
- We don't use excessive graphics. Not only does that enable a page to load faster, and keep it very clean looking, it means more of the content the site provides is real information for the end user, any user, than "page dressing". Yes, it is important to look good, but if you don't have anything to really say, what does a fancy looking page really offer the visitor? Why would they have reason to come back? Remember, the web isn't just about links, its about content too.
- The overall design applies ample use of white space so as to further aid the visitor to find and read the content easily. It's important to remember that the web is made of users of all abilities - some with slight visual impairment that occurs with age, others who have physical challenges that prevent them from using point devices like mice, and so on.
