“The power of the web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect.”
- Tim Berners-Lee, W3C Director and inventor of the World Wide Web
I take accessibility into careful consideration when creating a website, in fact it’s almost as important as the design and content to me. A website should be able to be viewed by every user, no matter which system they are running or how great their eyesite is. I take into mind 3 simple points when creating a website:
- Text should be able to be read, with dark text against a light background working best,
- users should be able to find navigation easily, be able to understand what page they are opening and navigate around the site without the use of a mouse,
- and finally that all wording should be easy to understand.
By using these steps I’ve implemented a few options into AshesFromStars to allow accessible viewing for all.
Access Keys
The main navigation (above the header image) implements the use of accesskeys. The accesskey for each item runs in numerical order from left to right, for instance 1 will open the page called Site: About this website.
The other access keys are as follows:
| Access Key | Use |
| 0 | Home - the diary |
| 1 | Site - about this website |
| 2 | Melissa - about the author |
| 3 | Content - content for the visitor |
| 4 | Links - other websites of interest |
To use accesskeys in Mozilla FireFox 2.0+, simply press Shift+Alt+number. For Internet Explorer you are required to press Alt+number and then press the Enter key.
Links
All links on my website are clearly defined by the use of underlining and/or distinguishable colour difference from normal text. Each link opens into the same browser window. There are no pop-ups or target="_blank" used within my website. External links are shown in a different colour (for this theme the colour is #660028.)