Make your site usable by everyone if possible.

1. Make your site usable by everyone if possible.

• A. Make pages that work on any browser.
  • If possible, try out your page on both Netscape and Explorer (current and earlier versions) and on both Windows and Macintosh platforms. Remember, however, that there are other browsers and other computer platforms, so it is unlikely that you will ever know exactly how your page will work for everyone.
  • If possible, don't require Java, JavaScript, Flash and other things that aren't available on all browsers.
  • Don't require a wide "window." Remember some screens are small and some visitors with wide screens will not be using full-screen windows.
  • Don't make your web page(s) depend on images. Be careful with using images for "text" items such as sub-titles, menu items, etc.
• B. Make pages usable by everyone regardless of their preference settings.
  • Remember that many people using the latest browsers may still have things like images, Java and JavaScript disabled.
  • Put the ALT code into any image code you have on the page. This allows those not viewing images to understand your page.
  • Make sure your page is readable even if a visitor doesn't download the background image.
• C. Make your site as backward compatible as you can.
  • For example, if you use Flash, and you can make something that works with the Flash 2.0 plugin, don't add some little cosmetic feature that requires you to save it as a file that only works with Flash 4.0.
  • Sometimes even if it can be done slightly more effectively utilizing features only available on the latest browsers, it is better to compromise and make a page that works for a wider audience.
• D. Make your pages usable by handicapped visitors as well.
  • With a little extra thought, you can make your page easy to access by people who have visual and other handicaps.
    • For the visually handicapped, make your page work with speech synthesizers and be careful about assigning font sizes and colors. Speech sythesizers can read text, but can't read images, so titles, sub-titles and other text displayed in an image get ignored, unless the ALT code is included.
  • Other handicaps to take into consideration are people with less powerful computers and slow Internet connections.
• E. There are cases where you don't need to make your site usable by everyone
  • If your target audience all use the same computer with the same browser installed with the same plugins using the same preference settings and they are all accessing the pages from the local server, then a lot of these points are irrelevant. (A certain number of people develop things to be used in their school's computer labs, so speed and compatibility aren't an important consideration.)
  • However, sometimes with just a little extra effort, you can also make your materials usable by everyone else on the web.