Some interesting thoughts on how we learn Web Design:
It has long been my criticism of high-school and university curriculum, that they teach WSYWIG programming, but not true coding. Even if they do approach actual code, standards and accessibility are mere mentions. As a result, they turn out thousands of students that can use FrontPage and DreamWeaver, but few who can hand-code a style sheet or adjust a site for IE/FireFox compatibility. Teaching Accessibility may actually turn a standard web page-building class into a creative workshop of ideas.
I’m pretty confident our web students are learning how to hand-code a style sheet and create accessible websites from the word go… although I think it frustrates them some. Especially getting IE/Firefox compatibility!
I’d love to learn how Teaching accessibility can transform a “web page-building class” into a creative workshop of ideas?
ooo - accessibility is my fav subject! ;-)
I recently discovered an interesting redesign project by ‘The Design Fab Five’ - taking Jakob Nielsen’s Alert Box and redesigning it in line with his Guidelines on the Display of link.
See: http://www.designbyfire.com/000094.html
(It’s a kinda old post - but I still love it!)
This kind of thing would make a great activity for a design class - eg. take a well know site that’s inaccessible and redevelop it with standards in mind??
*lol* That post is pretty funny! I hand’t read it before, but great to see designers creating beautiful accessible sites :) (What’s worse, an inaccessible site that looks gorgeous, or an accessible site that burns your eyes out!)
Certainly would make a great activity - although, i reckon it’d warrent the name “project” rather than activity!
Taa for the link!
if you’re after a accessibility/usability re-design candidate, why not try our very own web design toolbox: http://toolboxes.flexiblelearning.net.au/series4/410.htm
free to copy and ripe for a serious makeover (and in need of a good reappraisal of its IA too IMO)
I’m thinking about introducing this as an exercise for my web class here in Bathurst and it would be interesting to see what other students make of it too, so let me know if you’re going to run with it - in whole or part, and we can swap urls to view the results.
Hi Shaggy!
Yeah, I’ve looked at the toolbox last year… It looks like a lot of time and effort went into it, but it’s out of date before it’s released :(.
I reckon it would be pretty huge to re-design it… you’d virtually have to re-write everything (html,css, use of Flash, IA as you mentioned etc). If you were going to do it, I’d apply for funding!
Hope you don’t mind, just took a look around your moodle stuff, then found your certiv web blog (which I subscribed to!). You might want to check out our classes too: http://designwebsites.blogspot.com.
I found it really helpful to see how you were doing things with the blog (so much better than with Moodle hey! in terms of accessibility for students).