ASD Web Design Guidelines

Part 4: The Gray Areas

These are the places in web design that it's easiest to make bad decisions. Please understand that I am not trying to tell you what you can and can't do. That's not my job and I certainly don't want to stifle anybody's creativity. The items listed below have been gray areas since the beginning of web design, but they have attained a new level of importance in light of the issues in Part 2 of this article.

Background images and colors

Anything that makes the text on a page harder to read is probably bad for the site. Using color photographs or complicated tiles as a background image or pattern can lower the contrast between the background and text and make it difficult to read, even for people with good vision. Would you read a book or magazine that had yellow text on a green background for more than a few sentences? Probably not. So why should we expect people to read difficult pages on the web?

Animated GIFs

Animation can add some life to a page, but it can also be tremendously annoying if the animation is stuck in your peripheral vision. (As a side note, many of the public domain animated GIFs that were created two or three years ago run waaaaay too fast on newer systems.) Looping animations can also make viewing difficult for some people with certain learning disabilities.

Flash/Shockwave

This goes back to assuming the low common demoninator and a basically informational site. People shouldn't have to download a plug-in just to view the information on your page. As long as the animation or movie is an extra or there is an alternative, then you only have to deal with the issue of download time.

Frames

There are a few useful things that frames can make easier, but it's also easy to misuse them, especially where full accessibility is an issue. If you use frames, either provide a non-framed version of your site/page or use the <noframes> tag. If you don't know what the <noframes> tag is, look at one of the articles below or consult your HTML guide.

Personally, I haven't used frames in years for anything intended for a wide audience because I think their problems outweigh their benefits.

If you want to use frames, look at these articles for some pointers about making them work for everybody.

Frames Without Tears
http://www.alistapart.com/stories/frames/
from A List Apart

Some Caveats with Using Frames
http://www.evolt.org/article/Some_Caveats_with_Using_Frames/22/293/index.html
from evolt

Don't Forget the Non-Frames Folks
http://www.hotwired.com/webmonkey/96/33/index2a.html?tw=authoring
from Webmonkey

Cascading Style Sheets

The new standard for HTML 4.0 has the best support for CSS yet, but unfortunately, the browser companies haven't caught up with them. This is a big issue, and once we get CSS-compliant browsers (next year? maybe?) CSS will make it much easier to design good, accessible sites. That's very good news.

The problem is that if you go too crazy with CSS on a site, older browsers will choke on the page, especially with things like layers and absolute positioning.

There are ways to use CSS that don't inflict damage on your site, and there are ways not to. Here are a some articles to get you started.

Mulder's Stylesheets Tutorial
http://www.hotwired.com/webmonkey/authoring/stylesheets/tutorials/tutorial1.html
A good overview of using CSS and the current shortcomings from Webmonkey

Fear of Stylesheets
http://www.alistapart.com/stories/fear/fear1.html
Practical application of CSS from A List Apart