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 […]
Accessibility
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”. […]
PDF is for printing
Reading Time: < 1 min Check out this great article about why PDFs should typically be used only on documents that are meant to be printed – not on “normal” pages. I find many sites have PDF files all over the place, for things that have no business being in that format. I had intended to write a long article […]