Gawds Site of the Month
Responding from a purely personal basis on the Gawds site of the month
Responding from a purely personal basis:
1. http://www.bswi.de/prowebstandards/
This is just an incarnation of WordPress. Should blogs even be in the site of the month? Or is the poll for content rather than markup/accessibility.
2. http://www.haringey.gov.uk/
Although this site validates, it is using some deprecated features. No skip links, but you do go to the content first.
3. http://www.marketingspark.co.uk/
Validates and passes automated checks. Though the site hasn’t been tested in Firefox. There is an ugly horizontal scroll bar, and some images overlay the footer.
4. http://www.scotlandistheplace.com
Doesn’t validate and fails automatic accessibility testing. A shame because it does look nice, but perhaps not great for usability. Tabbing through the page shows that accessibility has no been thought through. You get autmatically taken to another page!
5. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/support/Training/Online/webdesign/
Page validates, and passes automatic accessibility testing. But the page is just a list of links, not particularily exciting design either.
6. http://www.designory.co.uk
Not surprisingly this site validates. Though the horizontal navigation colours may be a bit suspect. I found it hard to read the current page. A fairly plain design, but nicely laid out. No skip either.
7. http://www.studiolift.com
Passes validation and accessibility checks. But the site is extremely plain. No skip links, and no visible indication of where you are.
8. http://www.graphicpush.com
Fails validation. Also no skip links, so you have to tab through the menu each time.
9. http://www.randalldesign.co.uk
Passes tests. However, on tabbing through the page in firefox it is very difficult to tell where you are on the page.
10. http://www.delni.gov.uk/
Passes tests, however an extremely confusing tab order!
In the end I voted for designory, but not an easy decision. I was originally going to vote for Haringey, but the lack of skip/jump links on that site was a drawback, more so than on designory.
Posted: November 5th, 2004 at 12:05 pm →
Thanks for the vote Elfin
We have got a skip navi in there, but any feedback or criticism is well received.
ATB
Rob
Posted: November 5th, 2004 at 12:32 pm →
Rob, the skip method you used doesn’t appear to work. Tested in Firefox and IE6. The first thing you tab to is the homepage link.
Posted: November 5th, 2004 at 3:33 pm →
Hmm, this was a suggestion from Autistic Cuckoo on Accessify Forum.
Any ideas for a fix?
ATB
Rob
Posted: November 5th, 2004 at 7:54 pm →
Yep, though it was gratuitously nicked from a certain mr pepper. However To get it to work properly I needed a few tweaks.
The relevant html looks like this, and obviously has to be one of the first items in the body.
<div class="jumptocontent"><a href="#main-content">Jump to Content</a></div>
and
<div id="content"><a id="main-content" href="#main-content"></a>
</div>
which I found IE needed for it to work.
The relevant CSS is as follows:
#jumptocontent {
left: -1600px;
position: absolute;
top: -1600px
}
#jumptocontent a:focus, #jumptocontent a:active {
border: 1px solid #969696;
padding: 0.3em 0 0.2em 0.1em;
font-size: 0.8em;
background: #ffa3a3;
left: 2000px;
width: 10em;
color: #009;
white-space: nowrap;
position: relative;
top: 1580px;
text-align: center;
text-decoration: underline;
}
I hope that works, but on the off chance it doesn’t have a look at AWE website, where I used a similar technique.
Posted: November 6th, 2004 at 7:22 pm →
Thanks Rich
I’ll give that a shot
ATB
Rob