In the continually evolving world of Web applications and
Web technologies it makes sense to design your content and service so that it
can be adapted quickly and efficiently to meet any new circumstance. Using
existing design techniques like those in the WCAG 1.0 will ensure that your
message will be readily available to your changing (and expanding) customer
base and any new technologies they may choose.
Separate structure and semantics
from presentation. If you markup or provide content that is intimately linked
with one particular display or access technology, your content is likely to be
inaccessible or unusable on other technologies. The ideal situation is one in
which you provide the content (structure and semantics) separately from the
presentation of the information. You can then more easily create alternate
layouts for different Web devices, alternate views that can be chosen by the
client, or let the differing Web devices render the content in the way that
best suits their capabilities.
Use of styles - master style sheets
(a files on your server containing style markup relating to all pages on a
site) allows quick and comprehensive changes to the overall look and feel of
your site. A style sheet file can contain display instructions for numerous
display technologies. This means that instead of having to reedit every content
page of your site to meet the needs of a new technology, only the master style sheet
files need to be changed. Style sheets also allow different presentation to be
made available for different devices or end purposes such as screen and printer
or report and lecture presentation.
Color independence – avoiding the
use of color to highlight importance or differentiate features on your pages
will enable your content to be more easily made available on devices that
cannot display color. Use of XHTML & XML - use of these
emerging language specifications (in conjunction with the appropriate use of
style sheets) will make automatic conversions of content for alternative
display even easier. XHTML and XML are ideally suited to machine manipulation
of information. A Professional
Web Design would be the best way to achieve this.
Avoiding deprecated features of HTML
- many of the earlier markup features of HTML have been dropped in later
releases in favor of controlling these aspects of the presentation though
styles or style sheets. Applying valid HTML will assist you repurpose content
for future formats and devices.
Captioning
of audio/video in multiple languages - for organizations with multinational
clients, providing low cost captioning of audio and video content in other
languages can be an effective method of reaching that wider audience.
Translation and captioning are, in most cases, less costly than producing
complete alternative language versions of the more expensive media.
Redundancy of another modality to assist
understanding/comprehension - a multilingual user may be less comfortable when
absorbing content that is not available in their primary language. Available
alternate language content can aid their comprehension of your message. Clearer, more understandable, content - when targeting an
international marketplace, using localized jargon, idiom or culturally restricted
concepts in your content may make your message seem unfriendly or confusing.
Simple, clear language and usage will often translate more easily.
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