Archived entries for accessibility

Is your site globally accessible?

What we, as designers, usually do? We design websites, buy domains for them, host them on one of the fastest web servers. Then we optimize the site so it loads faster even own slower connections. To make it easily discoverable in search engines, we spend hours learning and applying SEO techniques. We even add a good translation plugin to our CMS scripts so people from different countries can be able to translate the site content for their own needs.

That’s for our normal content — the content that is shown to visitors when your site is in good condition. But what about such a situation when you need to put the site down for maintenance? What do you show your visitors/users during the maintenance period?

Are your error messages or temporary site-maintenance landing pages really understandable by your global user base?

Fix ‘em, if they aren’t.

The Wrong Way of Building Websites

What’s the use of spending tons of money in building such a site that’s completely useless for mobile users?

I used to love Streamy since the day I received an invite to try it. Its developers are very intelligent for what they’ve come up with – a really powerful platform for power bloggers. But Streamy is attractive and all that only if you’re using it from your desktop/laptop/tablet pcs. I don’t know how does it work on iPhone & similar gadgets but I never got it to work on my Nokia Eseries phones.

The reason? – It’s too AJAXY. While all other web feed readers (including full web versions of Google Reader, Bloglines, etc.) work perfectly well on my Eseries devices, Streamy won’t even load.

You’ll face two problems while trying to use Streamy from your mobile phones. First problem is that Streamy doesn’t have an interface for mobile users (like Google Reader Mobile, Bloglines Mobile, etc.) and second, even the full web version doesn’t work.

I had stopped using all other feed readers since I became a Streamy member but their poorly built design (from the accessibility point of view) leaves me no choice but to switch back to my ex-feedreader.

Note: I still recommend Streamy over other web feed readers, if your only device to access the Internet is a computer.


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