The Accessibility Hat Trick: Getting Abbreviations Right

AAA-level compliance is the ideal of accessibility, the bonus-round of accessible design: AAA-level compliant pages meet the needs of every group of users. AAA is achievable, but requires preparation and forethought.

Lieberman, Colin. List Apart, A (2006). Design>Web Design>Accessibility

Accessibility, Web Standards, and Authoring Tools

It's been a long trip, but we’re almost out of the dark. We finally have browsers that offer substantial support for several technologies established by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and other standards bodies. Designers and developers can use many core features of XHTML and CSS and sometimes DHTML without worrying about the hazards of cross–browser chicanery. As browsers have evolved, it’s become easier to comply with the W3C’s Web Accessibility initiative (WAI) and, in the United States, with the amendments to Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1974 (commonly called “Section 508”).

Schmitt, Christopher. List Apart, A (2002). Design>Web Design>Accessibility>Standards

Accessibility: The Politics of Design

Herrell deconstructs the new U.S. accessibility regulations and their implications for web designers everywhere. Part of our ongoing series on accessibility in web design.

Herrell, Alan. List Apart, A (2001). Design>Accessibility>Web Design

Accessible Data Visualization with Web Standards

When designing interfaces for browsing data-driven sites, creating navigation elements that are also visualization tools helps the user make better decisions. Wilson Miner demonstrates three techniques for incorporating data visualization into standards-based navigation patterns.

Minor, Wilson. List Apart, A (2008). Design>Web Design>Graphic Design>Charts and Graphs

Accessible Pop-up Links

Sometimes we have to use pop-ups — so we might as well do them right. This article will show you how to make them more accessible and reliable while simplifying their implementation.

Chassot, Caio. List Apart, A (2004). Design>Web Design>Accessibility>CSS

Accessible Web 2.0 Applications with WAI-ARIA

Our web applications can suffer from inaccessibility problems due to inherent markup limitations. Martin Kliehm helps us sort through the WAI specs for Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) to increase usability.

Kliehm, Martin. List Apart, A (2007). Design>Web Design>Accessibility>Ajax

Accesskeys: Unlocking Hidden Navigation

Your favorite applications have shortcut keys. So can your site, thanks to the XHTML accesskey attribute. Accesskeys make sites more accessible for people who cannot use a mouse. Unfortunately, almost no designer uses accesskeys, because, unless they View Source, most visitors can’t tell that you’ve put these nifty navigational shortcuts to work on your site. Stuart Robertson unlocks the secret of providing visible accesskey shortcuts.

Robertson, Stuart. List Apart, A (2003). Design>Web Design>Information Design

The ALA Primer Part Two: Resources For Beginners

ALA Production Manager Erin Lynch and the ALA staff offer a few starting points for the next generation of people who make websites.

Lynch, Erin and ALA Staff. List Apart, A (2006). Design>Web Design

ALA Primer: A Guide for New Readers

ALA production manager Erin Lynch sifts through our archives and offers up a list of starting points for new readers.

Lynch, Erin. List Apart, A (2006). Design>Web Design

All the Access Money Can Buy

Just when you think online multimedia will never be truly accessible, someone proves you wrong. In BMW Films, Clark sees a tantalizing glimpse of a better web.

Clark, Joe. List Apart, A (2000). Design>Accessibility>Web Design>Multimedia

Alternative Style: Working With Alternate Style Sheets

So you have an XML document. You’ve also been a good little web developer and used style sheets to control what your document looks like. You’ve even gone the extra mile and created several alternative style sheets to show how hardcore you are. Great. But now you need a cross–browser way to dynamically switch between the style sheets.

Sowden, Paul. List Apart, A (2002). Design>Web Design>HTML

Ambient Findability: Findability Hacks

Findability is one of the most thorny problems in web design. This is due in part to the inherent ambiguity of semantics and structure. We label and categorize things in so many ways that retrieval is difficult at best. But that’s only the half of it. The most formidable challenges stem from its cross-functional, interdisciplinary nature. Findability defies classification. It flows across the borders between design, engineering, and marketing. Everybody is responsible, and so we run the risk that nobody is accountable.

Morville, Peter. List Apart, A (2005). Design>Web Design>User Centered Design>Search

Anonymity and Online Community: Identity Matters

While anonymity may allow people to feel more free and disinhibited to discuss otherwise embarrassing or stigmatizing topics, it can also be a community's biggest enemy.

Grohol, John M. List Apart, A (2006). Articles>Web Design>Community Building

Art Direction and the Web

Introduces the principles and techniques of the art director, and shows how art directional concepts can shape memorable user experiences.

Hay, Stephen. List Apart, A (2004). Design>Web Design>Graphic Design

The Art of Topless Dancing and Information Design

Creating a web site makes for all sorts of strange working relationships. What does an information designer have to do to get a little cooperation?

Warren, Denice. List Apart, A (2001). Design>Information Design>Web Design

Attack of the Zombie Copy

You can keep copy from turning zombie by starting with a clear idea of exactly what you want to say. It's tempting to just start writing, but this approach can leave your pages vulnerable to zombification, because it's easier to sound like you’re making sense than to actually make sense. Outlines can serve as an effective vaccine against living death.

Kissane, Erin. List Apart, A (2005). Articles>Web Design>Writing

Automatic Magazine Layout

You can't always count on having a professional designer around to resize and position your images for you, but you'd rather your page layout didn't look like it was created by orangutans. Harvey Kane builds a script that makes your life easier.

Kane, Harvey. List Apart, A (2006). Design>Web Design>Document Design>CSS

Avoid Edge Cases by Designing Up Front

Better planning and a beefed-up style guide may be exactly what you need to avoid markup derangement or, worse, a dysfunctional product.

Henick, Ben. List Apart, A (2006). Design>Web Design>Project Management>CSS

Back to Basics

Web documents are nothing more than Source. For all of the inspiration, thought, and sweat that might go into a page, it is merely a mess of characters that happens to contain a lot of brackets. After five and a half years of actively building pages, it's occurring to me that a lot of developers haven't figured this out. What I see is not what they get.

Henick, Ben. List Apart, A (2001). Design>Web Design>HTML

A Backward-Compatible Style Sheet Switcher

You asked for it, you’ve got it: an Open Source alternate Style Sheet switcher that even works in Netscape Navigator 4.

Ludwin, Daniel. List Apart, A (2002). Design>Web Design>CSS>DHTML

The Bathing Ape Has No Clothes

I do this because, well, I love design. More to the point, I crave design talk: who’s influenced who, what tools do you use, what trends do you observe, what rocks your world, and so forth. I get a lot out of this discourse. The signal-to-noise ratio of this particular subset of the Internet has always tilted strongly towards meaning. Until fairly recently, that is, when I started to notice a new feeling creeping into the sites I frequented. In what were nominally gathering places to discuss and celebrate online design, design seemed to be just about the last thing on anyone’s mind.

Greenfield, Adam. List Apart, A (2002). Design>Graphic Design>Web Design

Behavioral Separation

Breaking up is hard to do. But in web design, separation can be a good thing. Content, style, and behavior all deserve their own space. One of the greatest advantages to designing with Cascading Style Sheets is the potential for separation of style and content.

Keith, Jeremy. List Apart, A (2006). Design>Web Design>CSS

A Better Image Rotator

About a year ago, I wrote an article, introducing a method for displaying a random image every time someone visits a web page. Administration was simple: just add or remove images from a folder on the server, and they would appear (or disappear, respectively) from the pool of random images being displayed on that page.

Benjamin, Dan. List Apart, A (2004). Design>Web Design>Graphic Design>DHTML

Better Invoices for Better Business

Invoices that obfuscate information, incorrectly state terms or arrive incomplete can be a massive headache for all parties. These mistakes will only delay the payment process, so it is critical you produce invoices that clearly deliver information your client will need.

Potts, Kevin. List Apart, A (2004). Design>Web Design>Forms>Usability

Better Living Through XHTML

Everything you wanted to know about converting from HTML to XHTML, including why you’d want to, tools that help, changes in the way browsers display XHTML pages, shortcuts, bugs, workarounds, and other tips you won’t find elsewhere.

Zeldman, Jeffrey. List Apart, A (2002). Design>Web Design>XHTML