What are these words? And how do they affect my website?
Accessibility
The Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) describe website accessibility as...
“…Accessible web design is most commonly discussed in relation to people with disabilities, because this group are most likely to be disadvantaged if the principles of accessible web design are not implemented. Failure to follow these principles can make it difficult or impossible for people with disabilities to access web pages.”
This in the severest of cases, can lead to legal action against the owner of a website.
Usability
Usability measures how easy it is for someone to use your website. A poorly designed website will lose your company more business than it will make. A potential client who cannot quickly and easily find the information they are looking for will soon find an alternative website that is easier for them to use.
Web Standards
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) established these standards to achieve their goal of everything on the web being inter-operable. A “standards compliant” website is designed to be viewed by any technology that is it’s self “standards compliant”. This means that your website can be used by a blind person with a braille output as well as someone out and about on their PDA or mobile phone. This technology is always backwards and forward compatible, so you can be assured that your website will look great in any browser, both old and yet to be released.
Search engine optimisation
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the art of getting your website’s pages to show higher on search engines like Google™ or MSN™. I plan for SEO from creation to completion of your site, making sure that every step of the way the final result will help place your site in the primary view of your potential markets.
XHTML
Extensible Hypertext Markup Language (XHTML) is quickly becoming the standard publishing language of the World Wide Web. XHTML has the advantage over HTML by being much more adaptable as well as having backwards and future compatibility.
CSS
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) define the style properties of an XHTML document. By keeping all presentation attributes in an external document, CSS reduces the file size of your website and lets different technologies read the page as they choose. This is very important if any of your potential customers use something other than a computer monitor to view your website.
top of page
