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FREE! Web accessibility: The basics

 Web accessibility is about making your website accessible to all Internet users (both disabled and non-disabled), regardless of what browsing technology they're using. In addition to complying with the law, an accessible website can reap huge benefits on to your website and your business.

Trenton Moss is the driving force behind webcredible; he knows an awful lot about accessibility and the Disability Discrimination Act.

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FREE! Ten Quick Tests to Check your Website for Accessibility

Accessibility - it's a big deal, but how do you get a quick overview of the subject? Well try here for starters, as Trenton Moss from the UK based webcredible consultancy outlines ten helpful tests for checking the accessibility of your website.

Trenton Moss is the driving force behind webcredible; he knows an awful lot about accessibility and the Disability Discrimination Act.

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FREE Web Development Tools: The Accessibility Toolbar Version 1.0

 Yesterday in her article on Accessibility Validation, Rachel Andrew showed us how to use the Cynthia Says validator to report on your site's Section 508 compliance, and how to understand the output!

Today we're throwing the spotlight on the latest release of the Web Accessibility Toolbar developed by the Accessible Information Solutions (AIS) team at the National Information and Library Service (NILS), Australia.

This Toolbar will not only help you to make your sites more accessible, it also has a great set of tools that can help you analyze the code in other sites, to enable you to develop your own skills.

Please note, this article may be freely reproduced as required to support the use of the Toolbar. All we ask is you acknowledge www.DMXzone.com and if you'd like to get back to us with any suggestions for improvments we'll try to incorporate them.

 

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Accessibility Validation

In this article Rachel is going to guide us through the issues surrounding validating for accessibility. Compared to validating pages for standards compliance, validating for accessibility can seem a bit vague and really rather confusing for even the best-meaning developer.

 

Here Rachel will be taking a look at what messages you might get if you submit your pages to the Cynthia Says validator and specifically ask it to report on your pages Section 508 compliance! Of course if you're outside the U.S., or don't need your site to comply with such regulations, the report will still help you to follow best practice web site coding guidelines.

 

If you're interested in this article, you might also like to check out some of Rachel's earlier articles on accessibility such as:

 

Introduction to Accessibility in Dreamweaver MX

 

Forms and Accessibility

 

Accessible Tables for data

 

Creating an Accessible Layout

 

Alternate Stylesheets for Accessibility

 

Fahrner Image Replacement and Accessible Images

 

 

 

 

 

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Learn Through Better Deconstruction II: Testing and Training Your "Designer's Eye"

In this last article of the series, Linda continues to show how you can learn from other websites by observing them carefully and noting down how they match up to the design elements and principles she's been writing about.

In this article Linda will be building on her first deconstruction lesson and giving you a real insight into browsing the web with your "designer's eyes" open.

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Learn Through Better Deconstruction I

In this weeks article Linda is going to carry out a detailed deconstruction of a very carefully thought out commercial website, to show how the different aspects of web design are brought together to build an excellent web experience.

 

In highlighting the craftsmanship involved in this site, Linda will consolidate your learning. Furthermore this article will help you to appreciate the work and detail behind a lovely site, that not only works on it's own terms but fully reflects the image of the person behind it.

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Design: Achieving Unity

Over the past few months we focused on design elements and how to use these elements in our web designs. However, we still need to understand how these elements combine to form design principles. This week, we’ll view several sites to understand these principles, or design rules. By rules, I mean rules that can be broken, but only if we understand how they work in the first place. So, we’ll take these principles step-by-step, because each one is achieved through all the design elements.

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Textural Troubles and Triumphs

So many sites either have no texture, or are else over-textured through (ahem) enthusiastic use of Photoshop or other image editors. In this tutorial, Linda discusses decorative texture as an integral part of web design when done properly.

The tutorial concludes with a check-list of design elements and principles to be taken account when designing texture for your web site.

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Colour Schemes 2

Last week we took a look at monochromatic, analogous and complementary colour schemes, and viewed a few samples of these harmonies from the web. This week, we’ll study triad and tetrad colour schemes, and we’ll also see how colour can be used as a depth clue. We will work with the same colour wheel as we did last week for continuity, and at the end of the article I’ll include links for further research into colour harmonies for the web.

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Colour Schemes 1

We all know that colour is important, because we respond to colours, including their shades and tints, and colour saturation. Since we use a minimum of two different colours in our sites (one for background, one for text), what colours do we choose? How do we make numerous colours work together? This week, we’ll look at a few colour schemes used by graphic artists, fine artists, and interior designers that will help us decide which colours to use for our specific products and services.

 

The colour schemes that work well together are called "Harmonies", and today's tutorial looks at how you can use three different types, monochromatic, analogous and complementary harmonies, to create a visually pleasing colour scheme for your site.

 

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Playing With the Rainbow: International Colour Implications

Last week we looked at Real World Music and how they used colour to link their business subsidiaries together throughout their web site. This week we’ll examine colour perception. Perception, in this case, is how we see colour, how we respond to that colour, and why some colours are better for some contexts than others. We learn which feelings are evoked by which colours, how those translate internationally, and by examining the international McDonald's web sites, the Gay Pride Rainbow Flag and Homeland Security Advisory System, we see how different colour schemes work. Read More

One Business, Several Branches: Repetition for Unity

There are times when a client might own several subsidiaries or branches within a main company, and each branch may have its own “personality.” How do you design a site a site like this? What design elements do you change, and which elements should stay the same? In today's article, Linda deconstructs a site - Peter Gabriel's record company, Real World - to illustrate how the designers maintained unity throughout a site with a repetition of colour, layout, and images. The designers assigned each subdivision of this site a colour, and these colours are introduced on the homepage links.

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