This page includes my response to this course and reflections on the process we went through this semester.
There were several goals for those of us taking and teaching Hamilton College's Computer Science 107: Applications, Implications, and Implications this semester. These goals ranged from specific and technical knowledge to conceptual appreciation. Some of the goals were:
From these goals, we sought to weave together a style of web design that is technically sound, compliant with standards, user friendly, and widely accessible.
One of our most poignant exercises for me was the presentation and examination of examples of web sites that were designed well in terms of our early understanding of accessibility and sites that were poorly designed in those respects. The sites that we examined that exemplified these qualities were The Facebook as good and 2 Advanced Studios as bad. This exercise was important to me because it was the first time that I actually saw what the difference is in what different users can see in a site or its code, a distinction that I had never thought about before.
A quick visit to The Facebook's web site will demonstrate its initial accessibility by its relative simplicity. The text and menu areas are clearly defined and provide good visual cues and access (i.e. contrast). The menus are also in the usual locations and grouped well by function (site navigation, personal pages and options, and business and detail links.
Further, in a stroke of sound design, viewing the page without styling (View > Page Style > No Style, in Firefox) reveals that content and styling have been implemented almost completely separately. The content (XHTML) is separate from the design (CSS), which is in external, reused style sheets. This format is how the W3C intends XHTML and CSS to be used, and, as such, it increases the accessibility of the document.
The good design of The Facebook's site allows it to be used effectively by different types of users. Sighted people may see it clearly (and aesthetically pleasing). Non-sighted people may access the content easily, without a lot of the extraneous code and complication of many sites.
The web site of 2 Advanced Studios, in contrast to The Facebook's, is not accessible to a wide audience. Even users with fully functioning vision may have trouble reading the small text displayed (particularly on CRT monitors, which are less crisp than the more modern LCD monitors). Also, the entirety of the 2 Advanced content is contained within a Flash movie, which is completely inaccessible to screen reader software and users without Flash installed, and there is no text-based alternative for such users. Their navigation scheme is not immediately clear either, and takes some looking around to decipher.
2 Advanced Studios has created an undeniably beautiful site that is really only useful to users with full vision and good computers. This group probably is their target audience, and showcases what they are capable of in Flash and related technologies, which is their main sale point, but a person without the abilities mentioned would have no way of knowing what is happening on the web page.
After our study of what accessibility is in its many forms, we set out to apply this knowledge and our skills to a local organization's web site, Oneida County Communities That Care.
This task presented a challenge, as we had to develop a measure of accessibility and a system for valuing and ranking problems that we found. There were also many pages in the site to analyze and work on. The specific development of our revision brought in an even better feel for the issues behind creating accessible and visually pleasing code and design. We recreated the CTC site in spirit and most of its original design, but improved upon issues like visual spacing, efficiency of code, proper implementation, and readability of content on the pages.
In our efforts to renovate the CTC site, we faced general design issues, which were mostly a matter of debate. The most difficult tasks, however, were those regarding different browsers' implementation of the XHTML and CSS commands. After many hours of work, we were able to make the base of accessible code display properly in the major browsers, including:
Finally, having completed the revitalization on the CTC site, we were able to reflect on the task and present it to CTC's organizers, which was highly satisfying after all of our work.
After this semester's class, I have a great feeling of knowledge and accomplishment. I personally entered this class with the goal of learning CSS properly, as I had failed at that task in the past, in addition to the main course goals. I definitely accomplished this goal, and, I believe, have made sound progress in achieving the goals of the course, which were:
CPSCI 107 syllabus