Dayn W Creative

I’m kind of a podcast fiend.  So, as a web designer, it should be no surprise that I listen to the Boagworld podcast.  Recently, Paul and Marcus highlighted 5 key tips to designing accessible websites.  Here they are in my words.

1. Utilize alt tags on images.
   The only way a screen reader (a device used to aid sight impaired internet users) will “see” your image is to describe exactly what the image is in words.  **Savvy designers will realize added benefit here, as search engines will pick up keywords in the alt tags.  Just make sure your alt tag copy is descriptive of the image, not loaded with keyword phrases that won’t aid the sight impaired.
2. Utilize title tags on links.
   Imagine a web page being read aloud to you.  Now imagine the person reading the page to you encounters a link.  Instead of telling you where clicking that link will take you, they begin to read out the destination URL.  Yikes.  With a proper title tag, you can tell your sight impaired users exactly what clicking the link does.  ie “click here to login”, or “click to visit my portfolio.”
3. Make sure you have fallback content for rich media.
   Most of us including rich media content will use Flash to do so.  If so, provide content that will be seen if the video or Flash cannot be loaded.  Usually, this can be taken care of with the SWFObject implementation method.  Don’t leave a hole where the media would be, fill it with a backup image or copy.  **Here’s another plus for you cheeky designers.  (more…)

   Popularity: 60% [?]

First, a bit of background.  Flash banner ads are usually click-able.  Because the publishing site (ie network TV sites, online newspapers, etc) usually uses a third party ad system to serve and track banner ads, the destination URL for any click through is not hard coded into the SWF (Flash ad).  It is dynamically injected into the ad at runtime with the use of a “clickTAG” parameter in the object HTML.  The ad system handles the pairing of the ad and its accompanying clickTAG URL.

I make a fair amount of Flash banner ads for Grady Britton clients.  I’ve noticed a an annoyance that should be easily solved.  At some point since the invention of the clickTAG, there was a division on the correct case of “tag” in “clickTAG”.  Some publishers require that the variable name be “clickTag”, and others insist that it be named “clickTAG”.

Why does this matter?  It turns out that some of the third party ad systems are case sensitive when it comes to the use of clickTAG.  For me, that translates into creating 2 versions of every ad, one who’s code respects “clickTag”, and the other for “clickTAG”.

Sure, I could write a simple switch to test which version exists and set accordingly, but the publishers employ QA folks armed with Flash decompilers. If the ActionScript that the decompiler reveals (which by the way, is rarely the actual ActionScript as written by the designer) does not exactly match the structure as required by QA, they won’t run the ad, regardless of whether or not it will work.

So, if the ad serving companies aren’t going to stick to “clickTAG” as recommended by Adobe, then let us designer/developers switch and validate the parameter without QA throwing up red flags because the ActionScript doesn’t look the same as the reference manaul.  Creating one off versions of the ads to deal a basic case sensitivity issue is just silly, especially if it can be solved for all future projects with a few lines of ActionScript.

Popularity: 100% [?]

Some sites will tell you that you need to upgrade your Flash player to see their content. Don’t always believe it. Check your Flash Player version, and compare it to the latest Flash Player version here: http://tinyurl.com/yrlrvb. Sometimes, the developer makes an assumption about which browser or operating system you might be using. If you don’t match that assumption, they will toss you the “upgrade your Flash Player version” error. Don’t believe the hype!

Popularity: 76% [?]