Emily P. Lewis | Design Portfolio

Accessibility & Usability

I take accessibility and usability seriously, but I, admittedly, haven't done everything I can on this site.

However, as I continue to fine-tune this site, I'll be adding even more accessibility and usability features, as well as testing against the W3C's WCAG 2.0 requirements.

Accessibility Features

Content vs. Presentation

This site uses XHTML Strict markup and CSS 2 for presentation. What does this mean? All pages are marked up with the proper structural elements, and presentation is controlled with style sheets rather than with presentational elements and attributes.

Both the XHTML and CSS validate against the W3C's validation services.

Acronyms & Abbreviations

All acronyms and abbreviations on this site are expanded with full titles in the first occurence.

If you are using a standards-compliant browser, these "defined" acronyms and abbreviations are denoted with a dashed underline. To expand the full term, just place your pointer over the abbreviation or acronym. Example: ASAP

Unobtrusive Behavior

Several features on this site utilize JavaScript to enable unique behaviors, such as the lightbox effect for full-size images. To take full advantage of these features, JavaScript must enabled on your browser.

However, if you do not have JavaScript enabled, these behaviors will gracefully degrade, allowing you full access to the information you need.

Images & Links

The images on this site have alt attributes, which describe the graphic in greater detail. Also, where relevant, links have title attributes, providing additional information about the link.

These attributes help explain the significance of images and links to non-visual readers and people who use text-based browsers, as well as provide additional information to all users.

Further, all link text is meaningful enough to make sense when read out of context.

Finally, some links on this site feature a visual icon to provide the user additional infomration about the type of link. For example, the Icon indicating link opens off site icon indicates the associated link will direct the user off this site.

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Usability Features

Skip Link Navigation

The first links available on all pages of this site offer direct access to main content, primary (top) navigation and secondary (left) navigation.

The primary purpose of these links is accessibility for screen readers and keyboard users, so they aren't visible in most browsers.

Typography

The fonts used on this site should be available in almost all computers. If the requested font is not available, the appropriate default fonts will be used.

In addition, this site is designed to let you choose the font size you want to use. Since every effort was made to use relative measurements when building this site, the site will conform to whatever font size you choose in your browser.

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