Hi Everyone,
As teachers and educators we need to make sure that whatever we post on a website is clear and concise and easily accessible to our students and parents. How frustrating is it for you when you go to a website that is so hard to navigate? Or you get lost because the links take you somewhere completely different than you intented? Or the color design is hard to read? Or what if your mouse dies in the middle of reading something important for school, what do you do if the site does not have a feature that allows you to continue on? These are all things that we need to keep in mind when designing our website for use in our classrooms.
This article talked about five steps to creating a website that is accessible to the whole audience including individuals accessing the site using non-traditional means such as not using a mouse, the visionally impaired and the hearing impaired.
The five steps include:
1. Organize for easier navigation - Here it talked about using "headers to identify new sections, not creating pages that are too large for the screen, avoiding red and green, and not using colors that are difficult to distinguish in grey scale."
2. Navigation without a mouse - Using the tab key allows for easier navigation around the site without a mouse. To do this one would need to "include the access key attribute in the link code." Since I am not a pro at web design I really have know idea what that means, but I do know by using the tab key allows one to move around without the mouse.
3. Text explanations for images - This is like describing something without someone actually seeing it. One needs to find a good balance though because too much information can be overwhelming for the viewer.
4. Using text that makes sense - One needs to elaborate on what it means to "click here." The reader will need to know what they are clicking here for and where it is going to take them and what information they will gain by doing so.
5. Web validators - These are individuals or companies that will look over the website and give feeback about its usefulness
By taking these steps into consideration when creating a webstie for whatever reason it will make the site more user friendly to all that come to visit.
See you all on Tuesday,
Sheila
Amundson, Lind. 5 Steps to
an Accessible Classroom Website. From the ISTE website Learning and Leading with Technology Volume 37 (2009)
November (No.4)
Hi Sheila:
ReplyDeleteI think it was nice to read that article just before “jumping” into our own website. It is important to keep in mind the five steps that Amundson gives in her article when building our own website. And how important is to provide accessibility for everybody to the material we are creating. I will try to keep them in mind!!
See you soon.
Sheila-
ReplyDeleteI really think Ms. Amundson has some extremely good points. Some of them, like have text explanations for images and links, for those who cant view images well, I would of never thought of. Overall, as teachers (future) we have to really keep the minds of you prospective students in minds, and we have to coverall all aspects to teaching them.
See you in class.
Travis
Hello Sheila,
ReplyDeleteI can share that same frustration when you go onto a website and you get nothing accomplished because it takes 30 minutes just to figure how to work the site. I think that my main frustration besides being hard to navigate is using the wrong colors. The layout and colors make such a difference when it comes to how many visitors and how long they stay on your webpage. I also never knew that you had to add the feature into your webpage for using the ‘Tab’ key. Thank you for the tips in making a user friendly website. I will defiantly keep these in mind for our class project.
April E.
Hi Sheila,
ReplyDeleteYou brought up very good points in your post about how to create a classroom website. Some of the things that you mentioned are things that I had never even thought about for making a website. I have never actually made my own website before, so your post was very beneficial for me, so that I can have ideas when we create our own websites for this class. Using headers to identify new sections is really helpful for the audience viewing a website so that they know when the author is changing subjects. The text explanations for images is really helpful as well, because it allows absolutely no confusion for what the picture is. Lastly, and I think most importantly, is the easiness of the navigation of the website. In my experience, it has been very frustrating when I can't find what I'm looking for and I essentially get lost on the website. Before I know it, an hour and a half has gone by, and I haven't done a single thing. Therefore, the "click here" point that you brought up is very valuable. People have a right to know what they are clicking on, and it shouldn't have to take them all day to find what they are looking for. This is why easy navigation of a website is so crucial!
See you Tuesday,
Madison