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Web design: Accommodating User Abilities, Disabilities, Browsers, and Alternative Devices

Guest post by: Yanick Belanger

Article Overview: Your page design must be fluid and flexible if it is to display well and function effectively on small screens as well as at larger resolutions. You should keep in mind that your site should be developed to work across browsers, platforms, and devices. So, for instance, use external style sheets to target and support alternative media, Accommodating User Abilities, Disabilities, Browsers, and Alternative Devices such as handheld devices and printers. And avoid fixed-width designs, which can be problematic for users with lower screen resolutions.

Web design: Accommodating User Abilities, Disabilities, Browsers, and Alternative Devices

Provide a flexible web site design that works in a wide range of screen resolutions and window sizes, and with alternative devices.

Your page design must be fluid and flexible if it is to display well and function effectively on small screens as well as at larger resolutions. You should keep in mind that your site should be developed to work across browsers, platforms, and devices. So, for instance, use external style sheets to target and support alternative media, Accommodating User Abilities, Disabilities, Browsers, and Alternative Devices such as handheld devices and printers. And avoid fixed-width designs, which can be problematic for users with lower screen resolutions.

Use scalable font sizes.

An important element of user-centric design is to create your site in such a way that it caters to the preferences and needs of individual visitors. For instance, allow users that may be visually impaired to alter the size of fonts displayed on your pages via their browsers. To support this functionality, you must use scalable font sizes in your markup (such as em measurements), rather than fixed font sizing (such as pixel measurements).

Avoid using frames if possible.

Frames can prevent users from bookmarking pages, but in terms of the broader questions of site accessibility, they can be a nightmare. Framed pages have the potential to trap other web sites within your pages; they can prevent search engines from properly indexing your pages (unless you include links on each frame page to link back into the web site proper); and they can cause significant problems for users of screen-reader technology. Though the correct implementation of frames can help alleviate these issues framed pages can remain a challenge in terms of accessibility and for users of alternative devices. For users of voice browsers and keystroke technology, each frame becomes a separate page, and most PDAs and cell phones can’t access framed pages at all. In the long run, it’s better to avoid using frames altogether.

Provide printable versions of your web site.

Take advantage of the CSS print media type to specify rules for print layouts, and eliminate the need to create an alternative print version of your web site’s content. Creating a customized print version of the site gives you the opportunity, for example, to hide web site-only areas of your pages—such as the site’s navigation—and to specify a more printer-friendly version of your organization’s logo. However, make sure you provide scalable font sizes for your print style sheet and, where possible, use black text on a white background.

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Article Tags: usability, web design, website



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