Usability
Anything that isn't usable is pretty useless, so avoid creating websites without considering usability.
A call for consistent display of alt text across browsers
How browsers display alt text for missing images varies, so it would be nice to see this standardised by specifying the recommended behaviour in HTML 5.
If you must use a dropdown menu, make sure it’s keyboard friendly
Many dropdown/flyout/DHTML menus are not keyboard friendly. Next time you implement a dropdown menu, make sure it can be used without a mouse.
Don’t fear the fold – people do scroll
If a web page is taller than the browser window, people do know how to scroll and will do so if they need to to find what they are looking for.
Safari, WebKit and alt text for missing images
Safari and most other WebKit-based browsers do not show alt text for missing or broken images unless it fits on a single line within the image’s allocated width.
Use a background image in your CSS? Remember to specify a backup colour.
Whenever you place text on top of a background image, check if the text is readable if the image is missing and specify a background colour if necessary.
Lightboxes and keyboard accessibility
All Lightbox clones that I have tested have issues with keyboard accessibility, making it unnecessarily difficult or confusing to use them without a mouse.
Remove the outline from links on :active only
Completely removing the outline from links makes it very difficult for people who do not use a mouse to see where the keyboard focus is. But there is a better way.
Improve your keyboard accessibility
Many web designers and developers forget about or ignore keyboard-only users when building web sites. Here is some advice on what to avoid and what to do.
Skip links need to be at least temporarily visible
When you add skip links to a site, do not hide them completely from sighted users.
Readable – another way of improving readability on the Web
The Readable bookmarklet, especially in combination with the Better Web Readability CSS framework, makes websites easier to scan and read.
Användbarhetsboken – a free online book on usability
If you can read Swedish, here’s an opportunity to read a good book on usability for free.
(Almost) never add a reset button to a form
Think carefully before adding a reset button to a form. Is being able to reset the form so valuable that it is worth the risk of losing the data you have entered? Probably not.
Make more web content readable with Readability
Like the content on a site but have a hard time reading it? Try the Readability bookmarklet.
Page zoom does not mean the end of flexibility
The fact that most browsers now default to zooming the entire page instead of just changing text size does not take away the need for flexibility in web design.
Do not remove the outline from links and form controls
Do not use CSS to remove the visual outline most browsers put on elements that have keyboard focus, and do not use JavaScript to immediately remove focus.
Don’t forget keyboard navigation
Remember that many people do not use a mouse to interact with the web, so you have to make sure that the sites or applications you build work independent of input device.
Let your links look like links
Don’t make your users waste their time by hiding links. If you can’t stand the look of blue and underlined links, there are other ways of making them obvious. But do not rely on colour alone.
Do not create empty links
Always make sure that any links you create have actual text content, or they will be unusable to some of your visitors.
Accessibility is more than “possible to access”
Making web sites and web applications accessible is more than making them possible to access - it also means making them usable.
Don’t duplicate link text in the title attribute
Repeating a link’s text in its title attribute serves no purpose for the end user. All it does is add noise and increase page size.
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