Reading Time: < 1 min Over the years, the “back” button on web browsers has consistently been shown to be one of the most-used features on a web browser. As time as gone on, though, websites have found increasingly creative ways to break that core functionality. The folks at the Baymard Institute have showed four design patterns that violate what […]
Accessibility
They’re never called “alt tags”
Reading Time: 2 min When working to make your website more accessible, one area to work on is adding alternative attributes to images. This text is what vision-impaired users will hear as a representation of the image (and it’s useful to Google as well), so it’s worth doing right. Using WordPress, for example, you can simply click an image […]
Website Accessibility: Help your users, help your rankings
Reading Time: < 1 min Yesterday at the A Brighter Web Meetup, we had a great discussion about website accessibility, why it’s important, and steps to take to get started. You can download the slides as a PDF, or view them all here: Website Accessibility: Help your users, help your rankings from Mickey Mellen You can also check out this […]
Some things are worse in order to get better
Reading Time: < 1 min Some things come along that just don’t make sense at first. A good example is the digital camera — the first ones took nearly unrecognizable pictures, and even early consumer models took very poor quality pictures compared to traditional cameras. You could look at it one of two ways: My normal camera is way better […]
An hour without a mouse
Reading Time: 2 min I’ve seen people try to use the web with just a keyboard for a full day, or even a week, but I thought a good place to start would just be a single hour. It doesn’t sound too tough at first, but you quickly realize — how do I switch tabs with my keyboard? Or […]
PDFs are starting to go away
Reading Time: < 1 min The UK has updated their content design guidelines in major way, and I suspect similar guidelines will find their way to the US before too long. Specifically, they now say: If you publish a PDF or other non-HTML document without an accessible version, you may be breaking the law. The reason for this is pretty […]
Use #CamelCaseHashtags
Reading Time: < 1 min I’ve talked about tips for accessible websites before, to make sure that every user can understand and appreciate your content no matter how they access it, but there is a simple tip that can help make your social media posts more accessible as well — use #CamelCaseHashtags CamelCase? “CamelCase” is when you put a capital […]
Who is that feature really for?
Reading Time: 2 min I was in an interesting Twitter discussion recently where the idea of having website links open in new tabs came up. You know what I mean; sometimes when you click a link on a website, the new site replaces what you’re viewing, but sometimes instead they automatically open up in a new browser tab. So […]
Some quick tips for an ADA-compliant website
Reading Time: < 1 min While a website can’t technically be “ADA-compliant”, as they have no specific rules for websites, following the WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) will get you a long way toward it. I’m certainly not a lawyer, and you can dig much deeper than what I present here, but these tips will easily put you in the […]
Please don’t have your external links always open a new tab
Reading Time: 2 min I posted a few years ago on the GreenMellen blog about sites that have links automatically open in new windows, and how that wasn’t always the best move. The logic I hear is “if you’re taking them to a new site, have it open in a new tab so that they don’t leave your site”. […]