Structural Sufficiency...
Building a quality web site is like building a new home. Home builders rely on industry building standards. A web site developer codes to W3C standards. The idea behind the concept.
The idea behind the concept...'structural sufficiency'
A home builder uses an architect's blueprint to build a home. The foundation is poured, the walls are framed in and the roof is put on. Wiring, plumbing, heating, ... the builder completes the project setting up a state-of-the-art home.
Home buyers want to be sure that their home is built with quality products and to industry building code specifications. A building inspector can describe what is visible; however, the inspector would not be able to assess the home's structural sufficiency.
A web site owner wants to ensure that their web site is built using industry standards and that it is open to business to everyone. The owner may be able to readily describe what is visible but may not necessarily be able to assess the web site's structural sufficiency.
Automated web site validation tools are available to anyone, but when a web site claims conformance from only a tool, it can only mean that the page(s) passed all of the automatic tests.
A thorough inspection combines automated web site validation tools with human judgment. That is where an expert web accessibility and usability professional can help.
What are web site standards and why is it important?
Home builders rely on industry building standards. Professional web designers code using W3C standards. Using industry web standards allows a web browser or other user agent to know which 'blueprint' to follow. As long as a developer codes to a set of 'blueprints', browsers and other user agents will know which specifications to follow.
The HTML 'Blueprint' - Document Type Definition
Accessibility and usability is about making your web site available and understandable for everyone, including users with disabilities. Web Accessibility Initiative - W3C explains it here.
Do It Yourself...
Or, contact an expert web accessibility and usability professional to conduct a FREE home page review.
- Firefox Web Developer Toolbar
- WebAIM: Evaluating Web Sites for Accessibility with the Firefox Web Developer Toolbar
- Internet Explorer: Web Accessibility Toolbar
- Markup Validity of Web documents in HTML, XHTML, SMIL, MathML
- CSS Validator
- Link Validator
- Functional Accessibility Evaluator - Useability
- WebXact / Bobby
As of February 1, 2008 the Watchfire webxact and Bobby Online products will no longer be publicly available. - Research-Based Web Design and Usability Guidelines
- Readable Testing
- Lynx viewer
- Federal Section 508 Standards
- State IT Database
- W3C: Achieve Web standards and quality on your Web site
Web Content Accessibility guidelines - Comparison of WCAG 1.0 checkpoints to WCAG 2.0
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