Section Navigation 

Related Workshops

Contact Information

LTS Director: Dr. Steve Breiner
Main Office: 262-6731
Location: Room 335 Belk Library

map

Change Text Size

A     A      A

Best Practices

Accessibility & Standards

Appalachian is dedicated to providing the best web experience possible to all users. The university is required by Federal law to provide access to its programs and services to all qualified individuals, ADA also applies to Internet web pages. Any web page hosted by a state or federally funded institution must be in compliance with the Section 508 law.

What does this mean for me? For most static web pages and content, making the information accessible is the direct responsibility of the webmaster or content maintainer for that site. The University Webmaster site offers validation tools and guidelines to help ensure your pages meet regulations and maintain standards compliance.

Web Design

A successful website design is about more than visual appeal. A functional site should showcase accessible content via a well planned site architecture.

Content

Users visit a website to receive information, not to judge design skills, therefore content is the cornerstone of any good website. The short attention span and time constraints of most web users prevent them reading bulking paragraphs of text. Keep it short!

Jakob Nilesen (a leading web usability consultant) of useit.com provides lots of useful information on "writing for the web".

When presenting your valuable content one of the more important things to keep in mind is typography. Here are some useful tips to enhance the readability of your content:

  • Start with a readable font size (1em or 100%) and define your fonts with a scalable measurement (ems or %) to allow users to control the font size in their browser.
  • If designing an expandable width (fluid) layout, keep line lengths readable by using multiple columns.
  • Keep the number of different font faces displayed on a site to a minimum. Use only web safe fonts and avoid display or decorative fonts.

Graphics

Images should be resized to their final dimensions in a graphics program such as Photoshop or Fireworks, not via the HTML. Save photographs and images with a large spectrum of color values (gradients, blends, etc) as JPEG or PNG. Simple graphics like logos and other vector images should be saved as GIF files.

You can obtain graphics and photographs from a variety of sources, including:

  • Appalachian Public Affairs - Provides images of campus, classrooms, events, etc. for university use.
  • Personal Photographs - Make sure to get permission from individuals in your photos before publishing on the internet.
  • Stock photography - There numerous free and fee based stock photography options available. Use your favorite search engine to find more.

CSS

Cascading Style Sheets define how HTML elements are displayed on a webpage. Using CSS can save you time, because it allows the style and layout of multiple pages to be changed all at once.

Helpful links to familiarize and get you striated using CSS.