Accessibility and Design Philosophy
When creating my website, I knew from the beginning that it was important to center my design on user experience. This means having inclusive design and accessibility. Horton and Quesenberry (2013) define a universal web as a place that is “designed for all, inclusive of geography, language and culture…a place that is available for people of all abilities, aptitudes, and attitudes” (p. 4). Accessibility references “how easily and effectively a product or service can be accessed and used” (p. 3). With both definitions in mind, I sought to create a website that incorporated audience-centered design and user-centered navigation.
Audience-centered design
Horton and Quesenberry (2013) tell us that “people are the first consideration and sites are designed with the needs of everyone in the audience in mind” (p. 12). Considering the web can be accessed by any and everyone across the globe, my audience could be those who have visited the countries I discuss as well as those who know nothing about these countries. This includes those of different cultures, ethnicities, languages, ages, genders, and abilities. In writing the content—which is about food and travel—I used inclusive language that limited any cultural references so that everyone could understand the content sufficiently. To aid those with visual impairments who may use a screen reader, I included alt-text with each image. Horton and Quesenberry talk about trying to minimize clutter, including leaving out any moving elements or those that autoplay (p. 108). To be inclusive of those with difficulty concentrating, I decided not to use any moving images or distracting colors that would take away from the content.
WIU brand guidelines
While in the design process for my website, I incorporated WIU brand guidelines. This included aspects such as color, typography, and using appropriate headings and subheadings. To loosely follow these brand guidelines, my main colors were white, black, and neutral tones. Horton and Quesenberry (2013) talk about how using white as the background color with black type allows for the best contrast, especially for those with vision impairments, so they do not struggle as much with reading the text (p. 115). I chose not to use WIU purple and gold as my primary colors, because I believe that they would be distracting for those with difficulty concentrating and would limit those with color blindness. Instead, I incorporated them as accent colors in order to still keep with the WIU brand guidelines. For typography, I used Open Sans for my primary font. For headings, I used a larger, bold font to make them stand out. For subheadings, I made them a slightly smaller font than the heading and put them in bold. Using headings and subheadings is a user-centered practice, as it helps users find what they need and organizes the information in a logical manner.
User-centered navigation
When building the wireframe for my website, I wanted to make the navigation easy for all types of users. Osman (2023) talks about how “wireframes help you identify and evaluate user flows so that everyone on your team understands how the visitor should interact with each page on your site.” Following this concept of user flows, I wanted to map out a few options in which my website could be navigated. First, there is the navigation bar at the top of the screen. On this navigation bar, there is a dropdown menu under “blog posts” in which you can click on which post you want to go to. Another option I included to navigate to the blog posts was to scroll down to the most recent blog posts and click on the buttons which take you to each post. To aid in navigating back to the home page, I made all of my blog posts open in a new window so that users could easily go back to the home page tab. All of the other pages on the nav bar open in the same window to signal that it is separate from the blog posts.
When it comes to website design, a human-centered approach will make your site more inclusive and accessible. Focusing on your audience and their needs always comes first. Understanding user flows helps in building user-centered navigation and puts you in your audiences shoes.
