The Email Address vs. Contact Form Debate
When a user goes to the “Contact” page of a website, what should greet them? An email? A form? Both? After asking this question over and over to clients, I think the answer is quite clear.
Best Practices
Getting More People to Care More About Web Accessibility
Accessibility Camp Seattle 2013 got me thinking about how we can make more of the web more accessible. Here are five ideas.
Five Attributes of a Good Label
If you’ve got a website, read through your menu and see if it passes this excellent five-point evaluation.
I’m a Web Conservative
There are few things in life about which I think of myself as conservative, but my web design style is one of them.
The Worst Practice Cycle [image]
I think I’ve identified a common pattern for the way certain “worst practices”—as opposed to “best practices”—continue to live on well past their prime.
External Links: Accessibilty and Control [link]
I know people have their reasons for wanting to make links open in new windows, but there are real problems with that. Here’s a link where someone does a great job explaining why we should stop.
The Alt Text Decision Tree [link]
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but that doesn’t mean text alternatives should be that long! But how do you know what’s right? This decision tree is a good place to start.
Text Formatting Don’ts
The way a person formats text is to communicate additional information. “This phrase is a section heading.” “This word is more important than all the others.” When text formatting gets out of control, that information is obscured and a host of other problems arise.
WordPress User Guide To Accessibility [link]
When it comes to entering accessible content, the skills required are rather simple, but many people find it hard to remember to do all of them. Here’s a great little article reminding people what those skills are. My favorite part: a simple test to see if your site is accessible.
It’s ALT Good: Alternative Text & Accessibility
Writing alt text is one of the fastest, easiest, and cheapest ways to improve the accessibility (and SEO!) of your website.Yet many people still don’t do it! If you’re unclear at all about what it is, take the time now to understand it and implement it on your sites.
Thinking about a Nonprofit Skeleton Site Map
I’m wondering whether a nonprofit website navigation structure benchmark might be useful. I’m looking for reader comments and ideas to help me decide whether and how to approach it. If that sounds interesting or useful to you, please chime in!
How to Report A Bug
When examining a software bug, there’s no reason to be squeamish! Get right up next to it! Poke it! Prod it! Click on all its buttons. Don’t let this metaphor get out of hand. Just read how to report a bug.
The Crisis of Our Times: The Violent Collision of Anthropomorphic Typography and Grammatically-Compelled Punctuation
I am SERIOUS about writing high-quality, well-informed, and, most importantly, honest content for the web. I have recently stumbled upon a huge collective failure of the internet community. Please take a moment to understand the biggest challenge to my generation and learn what you can do to combat this problem.
Think Before You Link
I don’t know that I’ll ever perfect the art of writing link text, but there are some basic patterns and word choices to avoid. This article covers how to write good link text that increases readabiliy, accesibility, and search engine rankings.
On Separating Content and Design
It’s a bit of a “buzzphrase”: “You should always separate content and design.” But this was also a mind-blowing and useful concept when I first learned it. Join me as I share various applications of this idea and try to nuance it just a bit.
WordPress Tip: Don’t Use “admin.” Seriously.
You may have heard that you shouldn’t use the default “admin” account that comes with WordPress. This week, I saw some data that confirmed this. So read why, and if you haven’t yet, change your own sites. You’ll be safer for it.