Web Accessibility

Web accessibility is the practice of making web sites available to people of all abilities and disabilities.

Web accessibility is important because is important because the more accessible a site is, more users can access the information contained in the site.

Accessibility can be improved in the following ways:
Correctly naming images to enable the use of text-to-speech software/ text-to-Braille hardware.
Making images and text enlargeable to accommodate visually impaired users.
Making active areas such as buttons and links larger to accommodate users who have difficulty using a mouse with precision.
Coding web pages so that they can be accessed by keyboard or a single switch device exclusively.
Close-captioning of videos, or a sign language equivalent makes multimedia available to the hearing impaired.
The use of plain language and instructional diagrams in informative websites provides ease of access to users with dyslexia or learning difficulties.
Ease of navigation and designing buttons and links to stand out also improves accessibility for all users.

http://www.samanzerin.com/ is an example of a website that is not considered accessible.The site has miniature navigation buttons, that are hidden in the texture of the background. These buttons also seem to link to random pages, rather than back and forward as most users would presume, considering the buttons are left/right arrows.
There is almost no text contained in the site, explaining what is going on, or even what the site is for.

http://www.questacon.edu.au/ is an example of a website that is easily accessible. With an easily accessible menu bar that features drop down menus with high contrast rollovers, a home page link that appears when you navigate to another page, it is impossible to become lost. On each of the sub pages, links to different information pages come complete with descriptors, explaining what is on the next page, saving time and effort required to find the desired information. The bright colours are designed to engage the target audience of school children

Useability/ Useability Testing

Useability/ Useability Testing
Useability refers to the ease with which a user interface in a website can be used.

According to Jakob Nielsen, useability is important because "studies of user behaviour on the Web find a low tolerance for difficult designs or slow sites. People don't want to wait. And they don't want to learn how to use a home page. There's no such thing as a training class or a manual for a Web site. People have to be able to grasp the functioning of the site immediately after scanning the home page—for a few seconds at most."
Jakob Nielsen (1994), Usability Inspection Methods, Morgan John Wiley & Sons.

Useability can be improved by making web sites more efficient, tasks can be completed faster; easier to learn’ operation can be learned by observation; and making the page more visually satisfying to use.

Useability can be tested in 5 ways, outlined by Jakob Nielsen: Learnability: How easy is it for users to accomplish basic tasks the first time they encounter the design?
Efficiency: Once users have learned the design, how quickly can they perform tasks?
Memorability: When users return to the design after a period of not using it, how easily can they re establish proficiency?
Errors: How many errors do users make, how severe are these errors, and how easily can they recover from the errors?
Satisfaction: How pleasant is it to use the design?

Key Web Terms Defined

URL
URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator.
A URL is the unique address for a file that is accessible on the Internet. The URL contains the protocol to be used to access the file resource, the domain name that identifies a specific computer on the Internet, and the path name, which is a hierarchical description specifying the location of a file in that computer.
An example of a URL is http://scosborne-web-design.blogspot.com/
A URL can be obtained from an web hosting company. Personal URLs are often obtained from Internet service providers, such as Optus, Telstra, iiNet, Vodafone, etc.

HTML
HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language.
HTML was developed by Sir Tim Berners-Lee in 1980, with the purpose of allowing researchers to share and update information amongst themselves. The use of HTML led Berners-Lee to develop the World Wide Web, to increase the amount of researchers that could share information.
HTML looks like this:

An example of an HTML website is:
http://www.killersites.com/

CSS
CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheet, is a style sheet language used to determine the appearance of a website written in a markup language such as HTML and XHTML. CSS consists of a list of rules, with selectors and declarations, which define the function of a website.
The advantage of CSS is that it improves content accessibility, as well as providing more flexibility and control of the presentation of a website. CSS also reduces the complexity of the structural content, because it does not require the use of tables for design.CSS enables the same page to be presented in number of different formats, such as on-screen, print, voice and also on Braille-based tactile devices.
CSS can be implemented in two ways. One is to attach the style sheet to the HTML page as a separate document contained within the root folder. The other method is to embed the CSS coding into the HTML document itself.

Flash
Flash is a vector animation program, designed to create animations for web display.
Three advantages of using Flash content in a website are:
Flash movies load faster and have smaller files because they are vector based.
Flash caches movies that have been viewed, meaning they don’t have to be downloaded multiple times.
There are almost no browser compatibility issues with Flash, as everything is embedded, and does not rely on any coded formatting.
Three disadvantages of using Flash content in a website are:
Flash handles text very poorly, which is a problem because the Internet is based on users reading text.
Flash also displays text very slowly and in poor quality.
Development of Flash sites are also significantly slower than HTML development. Even with the incorporated coding available in the program, coding in HTML is still faster.

Javascript
JavaScript is a simple coding language used as an add-on to HTML coding. It is cross-browser and cross-platform compatible.
Some instances of where to use JavaScript in a website would be:
Creating an image rollover
Creating pop-up menus that enable instant navigation
Form validation, which informs the user if a submitted form is valid, without connecting to a web server.
Creating body text, with the use of the tag, and applying text formatting with JavaScript.

Browser
A browser is a program or application that allows the user to view and interact with web pages.
The first web browser was Tim Burners-Lee’s WorldWideWeb.
6 web browsers are Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, Google Chrome, Opera and Netscape.
As the default Microsoft browser, Internet Explorer has the greatest market share, with 71.52% of the market share across its 8 versions. Version 6 has 24.67% of the market, while version 7 has 46.35%
Firefox controls 19.97% of the market share.
As the default browser for Macs, Safari has 6.65% of the market share.
Google Chrome has approximately 1% of the market for web browsers.
Opera also has approximately 1% of the market share, although it is used by approximately 20% of the Russian market, and is a common browser on mobile devices.
Netscape currently has approximately 0.4% of the market share.
Cross Browser Compatibility refers to the ability of a website to maintain its correct appearance and functions across all different web browsers. With the advent of more web browsers this has become more difficult, with a feature that works on one browser often causing problems in another.
Cross browser compatibility is important for web design because it means that your web page design will display and function correctly on any web browser. It is because of cross browser compatibility that tables have been replaced by CSS code, because CSS relies less on the web browser to display correctly.

ISP
An ISP is an Internet Service Provider; a company that provides its customers with Internet access through dial-up, cable modem, DSL or dedicated high speed connections.
iiNet and Optusnet are Australian ISP’s, while BT Broadband provides Internet services in the UK.

Hosting
Hosting involves running Internet Servers, allowing individuals and companies to upload information to the Internet.
Web Central is Australia’s largest web hosting company, while ASPHostCentral is a web hosting company based in Houston, Texas.

Open Source
Open Source is a program where, the source code is publicly available for use and modification from its original design for no cost.