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Mobile_Accessibility_ _Your_website_in_the_year_2005
| Mobile Accessibility - Your website in the year 2005
Throughout 2004 the number of web enabled portable devices
boomed. By “portable devices" I mean PDAs and smart phones. What
does this mean for you? Well it depends whether or not you care
about your visitors’ experience - you build your website for
visitors so you really should!
Nokia, Vodafone, Microsoft and others have already applied to
ICANN for the new TLD (Top Level Domain) .mobi. If the new TLD
is accepted not only will this create hundreds more “domain for
sale” sites but it will also help mobile users find optimized
pages.
When a website optimized for a desktop computer is viewed on a
small screen, the horizontal scrollbars are usually stretched by
the header and footer, inevitably this means the textual content
area is also stretched. "Fit to screen" on Pocket PCs shrinks
images on the page and attempts to display the text on one
screen without horizontal scrollbars.
There is no need to create a whole new site dedicated for mobile
users, as not only would that be time consuming it is also
unnecessary, due to mobile browsers being able to render most
code without problems. Simply make your new site with a more
logical, clean appearance. You should avoid relying on drop down
menus for navigation as they use “mouse over” and JavaScript
which doesn’t necessarily work.
When building your website I recommend that you use a top header
with a horizontal menu underneath - preferably not made from
images as the user may have selected not to view images. If you
must use images for navigation remember to add alt tags. If your
content area uses columns be sure that the main contents are on
the left. The “fit to screen” function will move the text to the
left hand side saving the visitor from having to scroll. The
footer should contain a link to the top of the page in the form
of an anchor tag. A link to your sitemap is important as it
allows visitors to reach the information they want quickly.
Optimize your images as usual in GIF/JPEG formats. Testing your
website is vital before you fully launch to the public, try
viewing your site with a number of different devices. If the
browser is able, use "fit to screen" and view the page without
images. It doesn't have to be perfect just as long as you can
easily navigate all your pages and view the content without
scrolling.
About the author:
Philip Wylie is the CEO of PWnet, a company offering web
solutions to all types of business. For more information visit
www.pwnet.org.uk or to contact him email philip.wylie@pwnet.org.uk
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