My Philosophy behind Website Design.

Clean & Accessible Websites.

Clean Websites.

You may hear me and other web designers referring to "clean code". By "clean code" we mean code that complies to a set of strict standards set down by the Web's governing body - the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Standards compliant code is important for the future of the Web and your site's place on it. With standards compliant code behind your website it will be more accessible, search engine friendly, scalable and future-proof.

(To learn more about Web Standards and Standard Compliant Code please visit the W3C's web site - www.w3.org.)

Accessible Websites.

Your website must be as accessible to as many members of your potential audience as possible. This principal is two-fold:

(i) Firstly, badly structured and difficult to navigate websites are soon dismissed by internet users, and therefore fail to do the job. Poor and/or sloppy content will confuse your web guests and come across unprofessional. The choice of technologies to use in your site must balance the "WOW!" with the suitability, and appropriateness of it's context.

(ii) Secondly, "Accessibility" is a big issue in web design these days. It usually refers to designing websites that don't exclude users with disabilities. The WAI (Web Accessibility Initiative) was set up by the W3C to provide a standard way of producing accessible web sites. The WAI came up with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). As the name suggests, they are just guidelines. To ignore them, however, would be a mistake. Laws are being passed that should soon make it a requirement. I check all the websites I produce against these guidelines and do my up most to hit as many checkpoints as possible. Satisfying these checkpoints helps all your visitors.

You will see at the bottom of my Portfolio pages icons that make reference to the Priority Levels and checkpoints achieved on the WCAG.

(To read more about the WAI please visit their site - www.w3.org/WAI)