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Oops! There Goes Another Accessibility Mistake

Author: Ray Gulick; Published: Jan 29, 2009; Category: Accessibility, CSS, Design/Development; Tags: Accessibility, CSS; One Comment

I’m not an accessibility “expert,” though I care about the issue and do my best to create accessible websites. However, I read a lot of web design/development information, and sometimes in my reading I pick up a trick without thinking through all of the accessibility angles. A classic example is how I’ve routinely (until now) implemented the Gilder/Levin Method of image replacement to place logos in the page header. The reason I settled on using the G/L method in the first place, by the way, is that it is supposed to be accessible. And it is, if properly implemented. Here is the HTML markup as it’s normally recommended:

<h2><span></span>Company Name Goes Here</h2>

I won’t bother with the CSS, because that’s not where the problem lies. The problem is in the HTML markup. Using a head tag (<h2>) in the page header turns out not to be such a good idea. The reason given for doing this is the supposed SEO benefits: Google will give the information high priority because it’s enclosed in a head tag. However, some of my SEO friends tell me there is little benefit to having the same heading on each and every page of a website.

But the real problem is that enclosing the company name in the h2 tag interferes with the document hierarchy. A semantically structured document has a single h1 heading first (in the "content" part of the webpage), followed by lesser headings. Including headings prior to the h1 heading interferes with the ability of people who use assistive technologies to make sense of the document.

So what’s the solution? Instead of using a head tag to enclose the company name, simply subsitute a div tag. Maybe it will cost you slightly in SEO (there’s a lack of consensus on this point), but it will definitely make your pages more accessible. I think it’s a good trade-off:

<div id=”logo”><span></span>Company Name Goes Here</div>

Book Review: Stories that Sell by Casey Hibbard

Author: Ray Gulick; Published: Jan 25, 2009; Category: Book Review, Marketing; Tags: Business, Case Studies, Change, Marketing; No Comments

I’ve known Casey Hibbard for approximately five years, and have provided web design/development services for her. She has written some case studies, or "success stories" as she prefers, for my company. She’s smart and has a lot of integrity, and I was thrilled when she told me she was writing a book about how to create and use success stories in marketing. The book was recently released, and Casey sent me a copy.

The first thing I’m struck with, in a quick perusal of the book, is its breadth and depth. Virtually no aspect of case studies is left untouched, from planning to getting customer permission, to research, to interviewing, to writing stories that get people’s attention, to how to use the stories in your marketing efforts, and a lot more I’ve left out for the sake of brevity. To call the book a "complete guide" isn’t hype, just a simple statement of fact.

On closer reading, I’m even more impressed at the amount and character of useful information provided. I’m beginning to understand how success stories are a natural outcome of relationship marketing, and how they’re complimentary to social media marketing. A light bulb has been switched on and, for me, that’s the test of a good and useful business book.

Whether you’re a writer looking for ways to incorporate case studies into your bag of tricks or a business owner, this book provides the why, the what, and the how for using stories from satisfied customers to attract new business. And in times like these, that’s really valuable stuff. If you’re a business owner, get the book and read it. If you’re not a writer, hire one and insist they read it before crafting some success stories for you. Or better yet, hire Casey and work with the "Success Stories Guru" herself (my label for her, not hers).

Part 6, Why Bad Websites Happen to Good Companies: Too Much Stuff on the Home Page

Author: Ray Gulick; Published: Jan 21, 2009; Category: Accessibility, Bad Websites/Good Companies, Design/Development, Marketing; Tags: Accessibility, Design/Development, Marketing; No Comments

You’ve seen those homepages with 3 product lead-ins and 2 giveaways and NEW!!! special pricing and the latest news and a billboard about what the company stands for and the mission statement and a picture of the CEO and an announcement about the company picnic and a picture of the dog by the sales manager’s daughter (no wait, that’s the refrigerator door) and a newsletter signup and a see-us-at-the-tradeshow blurb and a call to action to download a whitepaper and a partridge in a pear tree, all thrown up there in an ad hoc manner.

You’ve seen those right? And about half of the items have a "look at me" graphic or heading shouting for your attention? How long did you read through all that stuff to see if there was something you wanted to click on to find out more? Zero seconds would be the most common answer. Overwhelming amounts of information on a homepage, especially when all or most of it is competing for attention, drives visitors away.

So why do we see homepages like that? When I’ve had an opportunity to see what’s behind those situations, it almost always turns out to be a combination of two things. One, there is no real vision or strategy about the role the website should play. And two, whoever is responsible for the website (IT, marketing, whoever) has a "weak sister" status within the company, for whatever reason, which undermines their ability to do anything about thing number one. This creates a situation in which all the divisions or departments in the company (sales, HR, engineering, marketing communications, etc.) insist on getting their stuff placed in a Very Important Place on the website. Lack of a plan or policy creates a "vacuum" which sucks all that information onto the homepage.

See, it’s really just physics. And lack of priorities that comes with not having a strategy.

So, how many things should be on a company website homepage? It’s not really about the number. What it’s about is having items on the homepage that support the website strategy. And nothing else.

Get a strategy, get strong support for the strategy from the CEO/President, and the "how many" question (and the "can you put this on the homepage" questions) will go away.

For more posts in this series, see the “Bad Websites/Good Companies” category at right.

Paying Attention to Website Accessibility

Author: Ray Gulick; Published: Jan 17, 2009; Category: Accessibility, Business, CSS; Tags: Accessibility, CSS; 3 Comments

Web accessibility has to do with making websites accessible and usable for everyone, regardless of abilities or disabilities. Most of the techniques for making websites accessible are easy to do and don’t take much time, but many websites are minimally or not at all accessible. There are laws in place to ensure that public and commercial buildings include access for disabled people, but in the US, there are no laws requiring commercial websites to be accessible, yet (Britain has had such laws since 2004). US government or government-funded agency websites are subject to Section 508 of the Americans with Disabilities Act, but I’m not aware of any agency that has lost funding due to non-compliance (if you know of a case where penalties have been applied, please let me know).

I don’t believe there is a conscious attempt to make websites inaccessible. I believe the problem is simply a lack of awareness of what accessibility means to disabled people and how easy it is to make websites accessible. Also, older approaches to web design (for example, the old slice-and-dice method promoted and enabled by Fireworks) resulted in particularly poor accessibility. Those types of approaches were meant to make sure a website looked the same to everyone in all browsers, but they left out people with perceptual disabilities, making some of the information "inaccessible" to them. Website accessibility does not mean the site looks the same to everyone in your audience: it means the information is available to everyone. What good is "looks the same" to a blind visitor?

The first step toward accessibility is to build websites that are standards-compliant. Good, clean markup with all style elements defined in CSS is fundamental. Second, semantic markup is a great help, and the use of XHTML is a start in that direction. These days, thankfully, you cannot credibly promote yourself as a competent or professional web designer if you don’t use CSS/XHTML. If your website was built that way, you’ve taken some steps toward accessibility, and I would consider that the minimally acceptable approach. However, there are still a remarkable number of websites built with CSS/XHTML that use fonts specified in absolute units (pixels) as opposed to relative units (ems). This will not be a problem as IE6 passes from the scene, but that will be a while.

It gets a bit more complex when you attempt to enhance the user interface with jQuery or other javascript. None of the online accessibility validation tools I’ve found seem to be able to recognize the difference between obtrusive and unobtrusive javascript, or whether or not the page is dependent on the javascript to reveal information. So the page is given a warning, at best, or failed (most of Evo’s websites get less than spotless accessibility evaluations for this reason). Even Google Analytics code on the page triggers a warning or failure. It’s tempting for developers, with these kinds of results, to quit caring about accessibility.

But it’s best to use these tools for pointing out potential problems to evaluate, rather than take the results at face value. In the above example, further investigation may be in order with the Firefox Web Developer tool, turning off javascript. If doing so makes content on your site unviewable, your site is utilizing javascript in an obtrusive, inaccessible manner. Not good. However, if all content remains viewable, and only presentation is affected, the chances are javascript is not affecting accessibility.

Part 5, Why Bad Websites Happen to Good Companies: Having a “Splash” Page

Author: Ray Gulick; Published: Jan 12, 2009; Category: Accessibility, Bad Websites/Good Companies, Design/Development, Marketing; Tags: Information Architecture, Splash Page, Usability; 4 Comments

Splash pages represent a fundamental misunderstanding of the online medium. Often, they come from a print perspective ("books should have a cover"), or sometimes from a broadcast perspective ("a show should have an intro"). In user surveys, splash pages consistently rank as one of the most annoying things on the internet, but there are still splash pages out there, and most are attached to company websites (or print designer portfolio websites). A simple Google search reveals the many problems with splash pages, so we won’t address that here.

If the problems with splash pages are well known, why do they still exist, and in fact, continue to show up on new or redesigned sites?

• Ego, part one: the designer wants to show off his/her creativity or flash/illustration skills.
• Ego, part deux: the CEO or marketing exec is under the mistaken belief that a "cool" splash page is…um… "cool."
• Money: the designer can charge extra for the splash page flash or illustration, and maybe more for the "concept."

Websites with splash pages are inherently brochure sites (has anyone ever seen a splash page on a website that engages its audience?). The underlying assumption with splash pages is that "the market" wants/needs to see/hear the company’s "big message." That, my friends, is so "brochure."

Designers who push splash pages either misunderstand the web medium (perhaps they’re primarily print designers who only design an occasional website and don’t understand the differences?), or they’re making design decisions based on what’s best for them rather than what’s best for their clients.

Clients who insist on splash pages (I’ve had one of those in 9 years) are either uninformed, or they don’t care about their users ("it’s our website, not our customers’ website"). If they still insist on a splash page after you attempt to educate them, take their money if you need to, but realize that you are on the "brochure website" path on that website.

For more posts in this series, see the “Bad Websites/Good Companies” category at right.