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Resources for web developers |
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| Building accessible web sites: resource list compiled by Cyberium
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| General advice on web site building |
Web Monkey - A library of guides. For developers, about: authoring, design, graphics, multimedia, animation, e-business, backend HTML basics, tables, frames, browsers, tools, stylesheets, DHTML, XML, and the following quick reference guides: JavaScript library, HTML cheatsheet, special characters, color codes, browser chart, stylesheets guide, unix guide, glossary and domain registries. For web users, to getting connected, finding an ISP, an intro to browsers, using your browser, how URLs work, an intro to javascript, navigating the web, and searching the web. Getting started with HTML, a guide from the W3C. Jakob Nielsen's web site about good web practice in usability and accessibility Hints on evaluating web sites - See the content of your site how novice users see it! For web users, eight ways of assessing the usefulness of information on web sites.
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 Standards |
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Lots of the work in technology that we do is based on standards. In the Web world many standards such as HTML, CSS and many more have been produced by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). In particular, at the W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative It's up to developers to understand and implement them, to achieve the best results for web users, so web sites work on any reasonably modern browser on any platform. See:
The following pages allow you to see if you've done a good job:
Grids
Using tables to lay out a web site is no longer acceptable. Modern CSS positioning allows complex grids to be created, as this page - CSS Grid Positioning Module Level 3 - shows.
Search engines
Being found by users is essential. First a web site needs to be coded correctly - ie, in lines with the accesiblity guidelines above - in order to be indexed by search engines. Then meta-data needs to be properly treated:
a collection of Semantic Web tutorial resources. (Search engines are to become 'semantic ', ie, 'intelligent' insofar as they are to be equipped with a conceptual representation of Web pages. Therefore to be compatible with these search engines you must identify the nature of the content of a page correctly, and adhere to the Resource Description Framework.) 'Dublin core' metadata initiative on the correct use of meta-tags - it provides simple standards to facilitate the finding, sharing and management of information on the web.
Other standards
XML - W3C site - eXtensible Markup Language and http://www.xml.org. For an
introduction to XML, see this guide. (eXtensible Markup Language (XML) uses tags to give meaning and context on the content of a set of information. In an XML document, tags could encode the fact that Machynlleth is a town. But alternatively they could state that, in a particular document, Machynlleth refers to a node on a network of railway lines, or in another, a bowls club. This is where the extensible bit comes in. In XML you can define your own set of tag types as long as the tag set applicable to your document is defined in a separate schema. XML provides for self-describing data. This makes it very useful as a standard format for exchanging information because computer programmes can interpret the content of XML packets without any prior exposure. XML makes system development more flexible and is rapidly becoming the standard for information interchange on the internet.) XSL-T Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations e-GIF - Government Interoperability Framework - Information on policies and standards for publicly funded web sites - that can also apply to all web sites WAP Wireless Application Protocol- designing for mobile applications
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| Accessibility issues
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Accessibility is a prime issue in most web sites. There are 3 million disabled people in the UK alone, and there's no reason why they should be locked out by the design of a site from using it. It's requirement, legally, of public-funded web sites, under the DDA. This section is about understanding their needs, and the technical requirements.
How People with Disabilities use the Web Web Content Accessibility Guidelines World Wide Web Consortium Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) - and resources. See also the Wikipedia entry for a good starting point. WebXACT - a free online service that lets you test single pages of web content for quality, accessibility, and privacy issues. Using accesskeys for navigation assistance, to make a site accessible to people who can't use a mouse, or even a keyboard, and who operate the computer by speech. Adobe Acrobat (PDF) can be made accessible for creating PDFs. See the Adobe Accessibility web site Check for how your design looks with colour blind vision. They often miss all your colour cues, or can't see the text for the background - avoid this problem. Vischeck simulates colorblind vision and Daltonize corrects images for colorblind viewers. Checklist for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 (1999) Techniques for Version 2.0 (2007, in development. WCAG 2.0 applies more broadly to different Web technologies and is designed to apply as technologies develop in the future. The WCAG 2.0 requirements are more testable. In WCAG 1.0, brief descriptions are included in the main WCAG 1.0 document under each guideline. With WCAG 2.0, extensive guidance is provided for each guideline and success criteria in Understanding WCAG 2.0. The WCAG 2.0 techniques are also more comprehensive and include tests. Most Web sites that conform to WCAG 1.0 should not require significant changes in order to conform to WCAG 2.0, and some may not need any changes. Although WCAG 2.0 is not finalized and some details in it may change before it is approved, some organizations have chosen to start using WCAG 2.0 Drafts in their current Web development projects.) HTML Techniques for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 CSS Techniques for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 HTML 4.0 Accessibility Improvements Accessibility features of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) Accessibility features of SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) Betsie, the programme used by the BBC to create an automatic text-only version of its website. This site contains full information about Betsie as well as pointers to accessible sites and resources across the web.
Disability agencies
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| Audiovisual aids |
Macromedia Flash can make its content available to voice synthesisers, to be read, all printed as Braille. Macromedia Flash Player supports assistive technologies such as screen readers. Windows Media, Quick Time and Real movies can be made accessible to the hard of hearing, blind and non-English speaking Internet users. About accessibility and audiovisual material on the web. This uses the SMIL standard, which provides for web publishers to create simultaneous delivery of accessible versions of existing audiovisual content such as video, audio and animation, called Synchronized Multimedia. Accessibility features of SMIL (Synchronised Multimedia Integration Language) - how to make audio and video more accessible List of players supporting the SMIL standard, and authoring tools. |
| Screen readers |
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These read all content on a computer and cost about £500. Free trial downloads of most of these are available. However, free web browsers that do the same job are available - see below.
Apple computers can automatically read what's on the screen to you - use the Speech System Preference panel JAWS (Job Access with Speed) - a commercial screen reader software for Windows; also outputs to refreshable Braille displays. Window-Eyes - Produced by GWMicro - Speech and Braille specialist application for DOS, Windows 3.x and 95/98
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| Voice browsers |
pwWebSpeak - Internet browser that speaks web pages - free. MultiWeb - a free World Wide Web browser for Windows 3.x/95 that includes a speech engine, text enlargement, and scanning for switch devices. Home Page Reader (HPR) - uses IBM's ViaVoice text-to-speech (TTS) text-to-speech synthesizer to speak text, frames, image and text links, alternate text for images and image maps, form elements including JavaScript, graphics descriptions, text in column format, and data input fields. It includes special table navigation features that allow users to understand even the most complex tables, such as television listings. Amaya - W3C's test-bed web site creation tool and browser, for compliance with W3C standards. Versions for Windows 95/98, Windows NT and UNIX. Lynx - A popular text-based browser for allowing flexible and powerful text-based access from older platforms. Versions for UNIX, Windows 95/NT and MS-DOS. Works with screen readers.
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| Web development applications |
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The following is a short list of commonly used HTML editors. This list cannot be exhaustive and they are listed by their generic names. To ensure continued relevance, no version numbers are shown. This list does not, in any way, constitute any form of endorsement by Cyberium.
HTML editor applications
Plug-ins
The following is a short list of commonly used applications for creating plug-in files.
Streaming media
Open source software
Freeware and shareware
File Transfer Protocol (FTP) applications
For upoading web sites. (Some html editors contain their own ftp software.)
Readers
Compression packages
Audio recording/editing/mixing tools
Web server statistical packages
AWStats - a free powerful and featureful tool that generates advanced web, streaming, ftp or mail server statistics, graphically. This log analyzer works as a CGI or from command line and shows you all possible information your log contains, in few graphical web pages. Analog WebTrends
Route tracing package
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| Rating sites - register your site so filters don't block it! |
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| Search engines |
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