Guerilla Internet Marketing » Web Design

Accessible design is the law – Target being sued!

bhancock — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 13:55:59 +0000

A lawsuit against Target has now achieved class action status, in a claim that the retailer’s web site is inaccessible to the blind, therefore violating federal and state discrimination laws. This story is making headlines and is bouncing around the web as if this is something new. In reality, back in 1996 the U.S. Justice Department ruled that Web sites are public accommodations and must therefore offer access to the disabled to comply with the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA). What does this mean? It means that designing with the needs of the disabled is the law, and companies that don’t take their needs into account can and will be penalized.

This may scare some site owners because they are worried about being sued. In reality, designing a site to be accessible isn’t terribly complicated, and besides the fact that you will not be alienating the disabled, you could benefit by inviting a whole new channel of shoppers into your web site. I have read several reports that claim disabled web shoppers are some of the most loyal customers the web has to offer. Once they find a comfortable and convenient place to shop, they keep coming back.

Anyway, here are a few resources to help with accessible design guidelines:

W3C Accessibility Guidelines

Designing Accessible Web Site

National Federation of the Blind

Can you navigate the web without clicking?

bhancock — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 15:45:53 +0000

This is a very interesting usability study. It looks like this site has been around for a while but I stumbled upon it last night. It’s entertaining at the very least, but I think it’s thought provoking as well. Are people so set it their ways that user behavior can’t be modified or adjusted to change the way people think about navigation, and the web in general? The web is dynamic and constantly changing, but how drastic have these changes been? Is technology limited by the ability of users to adapt to it?

Enough with the philosophical debate, check out the site and have fun!
http://www.dontclick.it/

Image resizing – Unbelievable technology coming!

bhancock — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 20:42:13 +0000

Image resizing is going to change by leaps and bounds. Check out this video of an up and coming technology. It allows continuous resizing where the content is preserved.

How it works
They break images up into columns and seams and define different levels of ‘energy’ to remove areas that are insignificant so that the overall image is preserved. It also allows for enlarging images while identifying these ‘energy’ areas and building out around these insignificant seams. It’s really unbelievable and you have to watch the video to really get a handle on what is happening!

You can view the paper written by the brains behind this technology (Dr. Ariel Shamir and Dr. Shai Avidan) by going here. It turns out that Dr. Shai Avidan has recently joined Adobe so hopefully we’ll see similar technology integrated into their products in the coming years.