In the interest of reaching the largest number of visitors I have implemented several design guidelines that should make the site accessible to most users. Among these guidelines is that I will attempt to make the pages match the Priority 1 and 2 checkpoints of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, as well as most of the Priority 3 checkpoints. The pages will also be designed to use valid CSS, and HTML where possible. Several techniques outlined below describe how I am able to meet these standards.
| Accessibility | CSS | HTML |
The pages are tested against the checklist available here: http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/full-checklist.html. They meet most of the priority 1 and priority 2 checkpoints, as well as some of the priority 3 checkpoints. I will not claim that they will meet all of the checkpoints, but they do meet a majority of them.
The site is laid out so that any browser should be able to handle the layout. This includes Netscape, Opera, FireFox and Internet Explorer. Older browsers such as Netscape 4.x should be able to access the pages without problems. The pages are tested in four different browsers, and using a text browser emulator to see how the pages are laid out and to see if they are usable if the stylesheets are turned off.
Cascading Stylesheets are what I use for all layout and formatting on this site. Currently I am using floating elements rather than absolute positioning to layout the screen, as is able to handle changes in font size better than with absolute positioning. I am not declaring font sizes in order to improve accessibility.
The rollover effects that you see come from techniques learned at css/edge. Because of accessibility issues I decided not to include some of the features that would make the pages unreadable if stylesheets were turned off. I will also be designing a print media stylesheet that doesn't display or changes the way some elements of the page display when printing pages. Essentially I am doing this for my own use, because I don't see why anyone would want to print off these pages.
All pages will be designed so that they are at least valid HTML 4.01 Transitional. Those pages that are written from a database will be HTML 4.01 Transitional, and all others will be at least XHTML 1.0 Transitional if they open pages in new windows, or XHTML 1.0 Strict if they don't. The reason for that is to allow me easily update the pages to different standards as they become available.
The pages won't use elements such as <h1> as formatting elements. They will be used to describe the structure of the document. I will make every attempt not to use deprecated elements.