Scare Tactics Are Not The Way
Nigel, if you've not already done so, point your friend at Dave Shea's Zen Garden. I'm no designer but have just had a shot at it myself (titled 'So Long...', as a tribute to the Voyagers), if for no other reason than to examine the potential.
I grew up in the pixel-perfect camp and grudgingly accepted CSS as the way of the future, although arguing that it was naff at producing pixel perfection. I was wrong. Pixel perfection can be achieved - if you know how.
And this, I believe, is the nub of the argument: new technologies and practices take time to settle and to learn, and it's the learning curve which dissuades many from embarking on the transition.
I'm doing the same with accessibility issues. There seems so much to learn. But. As with any initiative, it takes time, patience and practice. I don't have much of any but the more I expend, the less I need
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Hi,
I have a small design company with approx 40 websites, some of which are 3 to 4 years old.
I "picked up" web design as i went along. Mainly using Fireworks and dreamweaver.
I have recetly bought "LIFT" for dreamweaver and use "A-Promt" software to try and make my sites more accesible, as well as hard-coding the pages. I think i have pickup most of the rules and simple things but find myself stuck on one rule.
When you use Fireworks to export slices and HTML, and then open the generated html page. You find that the webpage, with its slices are all put into a table that has its width set in pixels. If i try to change this the page will go completely out of synch.
Any ideas as to how to get around this. I am a complete enthusiast and am willing to learn new methods, but this has me stumped.
I am currently working my way through my websites without a cost to the customer, as my customers simply don't want to pay for their sites to be accessible. I seem to come accross the view "if some people cant access my site then so be it".
Does enbody else get this answer from their customers ?
Jason
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Ozduck, here's a consideration I've used elsewhere which encompasses my view on accessibile development and the client perspective -
I simply make my pitch and explain that as a result of my skillsets, client sites are more accessible to a greater Internet audience. Period. All the verbiage over standards and accessibility compliance is a polite curio across the business table. Provided both my and my clients' principle agendas are met - how much does it cost and what will be the likely (increase in, if an upgrade) conversion rate, and we both leave the bargaining table satisfied, I can get on with the job of delivering.
Most clients don't give a damn about what goes on under the hood. They want the site to reflect their company in a professional light, meet the business model and deliver as great a return on investment as possible.
Intrinsic to all but vanity sites is the need to generate traffic. This becomes fundamentally more efficient with standards-compliant accessible sites because the inherently light and slick markup makes your site more easily ingested by the search engines whose SERPs algorithms will favour well-featured semantically tight copy and reward you and your clients with better visibility on the Web.
That's the primary input to the conversion game: visibility. Once a visitor hits your site accessibility kicks in. A standards-compliant, accessible site will be far 'stickier' because fewer surfers are likely to turn away in disgust or frustration; your site will work equally well in archaic browsers and on a variety of devices as it does on the latest P4 Explorer 6-based mega-depth monitor platform.
And no, I'm not confusing accessibility with usability. They are different fields of expertise but both are underpinned and enhanced by standards-compliance.
So, visibility brings the traffic; accessibility maintains the traffic. Visitors with physical and/or cerebral impairments (a huge market when you consider many pensioners fall into this audience) will more likely bookmark and return because the site is usable.
These are the basic commonsense arguments for promoting standards-compliant and accessible development.
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| Nigel Peck wrote: |
| I have a friend who is a Graphic Designer and he is getting noticably annoyed with Web Accessibility. The reason for this is that he feels like we are trying to take all the fun out of what he does and just turn in into a mundane task of following huge numbers of laws and standards. |
As we all know, one of the aspects of accessibility is the separation of HTML for structure and CSS for presentation. I have not examined the HTML of CSSZenGarden but let's for a minute assume that it has been coded properly. Let's also ignore those re-designs of CZG in which they use FIR and other techniquest that hinder accessibility (ie, with CSS enabled). Therefore, what we are left with is properly structured HTML and beautiful, amazing, jaw-dropping designs that could fit quite well within accessibility guidelines. Therefore, accessibility and design can work hand in hand in most cases.
There are two problems I see though.
- Some (many?) designers use Photoshop or other graphics application to create their web pages and use Save As HTML (or whatever it is called in PS). PS then creates a tables based layout. Current graphic designers aren't used to working with code and even though my experience with DW MX 2004 has been quite positive with regard to CSS, I still find that I edit CSS in the code rather than using the dialogs. Therefore, many designers don't know CSS because their tools don't know CSS.
- Accessibility is not easy. Look at any of the questions that have been raised here and notice that many of them do not have straight forward answers. If all websites met Priority 1, the world would be a much better place and priority 1 is not too difficult but it does require some understanding of HTML and CSS and accessibility issues.
I applaud Malarkey for his wonderful graphic layouts while achieving AAA levels. He has taken the time to learn HTML, CSS, Photoshop (and other software perhaps) and Accessibility and still comes out with great designs. Other designers can do the same.
Nigel: might you consider taking one of your friend's homepages and rebuilding it so that it is accessible? That might help him understand that accessibility and design can go hand in hand.
Jules
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Inclined to agree, Jules, but might add -- designers are no longer insulated from the implications of their work on the Web and must make the paradigm shift and understand the canvass on which they work, especially if they're making the leap from designer to designer-developer.
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| Quote: |
| I applaud Malarkey for his wonderful graphic layouts while achieving AAA levels. He has taken the time to learn HTML, CSS, Photoshop (and other software perhaps) and Accessibility and still comes out with great designs. |
The cheque is in the post Jules...
<sticking my neck out>
1. Designing with accessibility in mind is easy!
There, I said it... That said, learning the skills and developing the knowledge takes around 6-12 months and is something that your average 'web-designer' (read Dreamweaver user) has rarely started to do.
The fact is, that many (if not the majority) of web designers that I come across know bugger all about how web pages actually work. Hell, there shouldn't even be a job title of 'web designer' - it should be banned (an after the revolution, it will be!).
Many are either;
Self taught
From a print background (hey, ain't the web just a brochure on a screen?)
From an IT background (mistakingly confusing the web knowledge with computer knowledge)
2. Designing with accessibility in mind is just about understanding
Understanding about technologies, yes, but more importantly understanding about how people actually use web sites. Therefore, accessible design is just 'good design'. After all, if somebody/anybody finds something hard to use then it has not been well designed. And I don't just mean the blind/visually or otherwise impaired. I mean everybody, period.
I'm blushing to hear Jules' comments about my work. But there shouldn't be any praise necessary. I do what I do, the way that I do it because I believe that it's the best way for me to work. It also makes my business more efficient, allows me to implement jobs quicker while allowing for more design time and increases my profitability.
The fact that these methods make accessible sites matters a lot to me, but 90% of my clients don't really care about accessibility. Hell, most of them don't even know that their sites are accessible or built to web standards...
... and that is the whole point, isn't it?
</sticking my neck out>
Stuff I do
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Design: http://www.stuffandnonsense.co.uk
My book: http://www.transcendingcss.com/
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