Hi folks I am redesigning my site with accessibility in mind....I was wondering what you guys thought of the new site...

http://www.premtech.com.au/demos/premtech

The following pages are working:
Homepage
Contact pages

I havnt got any more done as yet untill i know i'm on the right track..

Cheers
Warren

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Warren
http://www.premtech.com.au
Premtech Web Design
Affordable Web Design Without Compromising Quality

Looks nice. I only have 2 suggestions.

1) Normally, the "Skip Menu" is hidden so that screen readers see it but the average user doesn't. Not a biggie, just the way I normally see it.

2) On your "Contact" page, the fields being filled in is a nuisance. Having to select it all, delete, then start typing is just a pain in the backside. If you're going to fill them, make them blank on focus.

Brian.

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ToolBarn.com, an Internet Retailer Top 500 and Inc. 500 Company | Tool Parts | Pet Supplies

Warren,

I like the site design. I agree about the Skip Menu. I've never seen that before, so I don't know what it is, but if it doesn't need to appear, it will avoid some confusion.

You need to do some spell checking, like competeitors on the home page. And an overall review by a copy editor might be helpful to make sure the copy reads as easily as possible.

From a marketing perspective, I'd put more punch into the copy on the home page, and include a "call to action".

I would make a link to the website of the company who provides your testimonial.

I'd also change the way the main navigation on the left handles colors. It looks like the nav buttons change color after you've accessed a page. That is fairly common with text links in the body, but it doesn't work so well for the main navigation. The problem is that as it is, I can't tell what page I'm on. I'd set a color difference for the current page, but leave the other buttons in their original state.

The font size is a bit bigger than I normally see, but it didn't bother me.

Good luck with the site - hope this helps.

Kathleen

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Getting It Write, Inc.
The Small Business Marketing Pro
Real Estate Marketing Assistance: Real Estate Websites - Brands - Logos
http://www.buildrealestateresults.com

Thank you heaps for the great reviews...

I will try to explain the reasoning behind the mentioned suggestions. (this is only my reasoning of course)

1. skip menu button...

Kathleen the reason we have a skip menu button is for those visitors using speech browsers and probably
more importantly for people who cant use a mouse (these people have to tap the keyboard with a mouth stick etc..)...
A speech browser reads everything on a webpage, and you could imagine if they had to read through the navigation on every page on every site,
way too long, and the folks with the tap stick imagine tapping the keyboard to tab through 100 links in a menu on every page they got to...wow...
The Sip Menu Button skips over the menu to a predfined place (just an anchor link)...usually the first unique content for that page

The reason I made the link visible (my thinking...probly wrong here) was to not have any invisible links
on my sites for the search engines...

2. Spelling ...WELLLLL you know....i'm hopeless at it

3. Form

I validated the site using A-Promt Accessibility validator and that was one of the errors...It needed values to validate...
I know exactly what you are saying there....its a pain....might get rid of them anyways.
Looks horrible too.

4. Navigation colour

The colours are set in a:link a:hover and a:visited css styles. I was told be a few friends thay they hate it when
they go to a site and can't see what pages they have visited...so thats why I used the visited colours.
I will have a think about maybe
setting it up so the current page button looks depressed (like me)using css of course....

5. Copy

Kathleen how muchg do you charge....lol

6. Text Size

The text size is set for general page text at 1em which is 100% of the browser default text size... if you are using IE try this... View >> Text Size and try them all to see the difference...then try another site and see what happens....thats the difference between using a set font size and em of % font size

I really appreciate your suggestions ....they are very constructive.

cheers
BTW I am getting the site fully tested by someone who is legally blind and uses a screen reader.

Warren

__________________
Warren
http://www.premtech.com.au
Premtech Web Design
Affordable Web Design Without Compromising Quality

Shari Thurow says at SES shows every time that in the case of "Skip Nav" links, hidden links are permissible. They're not linking outside the current page, so there shouldn't ever be a penalty by any search engine for those.

If she says it, and she's really big on usability and search engine visibility, then I'd take that as golden. Not quite gold, but who can tell the difference. Her books are worth their weight in gold at times. ;-)

Brian.

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ToolBarn.com, an Internet Retailer Top 500 and Inc. 500 Company | Tool Parts | Pet Supplies

Thanks Brian

Done the invisible link now.....

I was wondering what the implications of a font-size:0em; is????

__________________
Warren
http://www.premtech.com.au
Premtech Web Design
Affordable Web Design Without Compromising Quality

I'm not sure about different validation systems, but w3c does not require form boxes to have values. I would be interested to know about the validator you are using - what is it's main purpose? I am interested in web accessibility I would like to learn more about stuff like that!

It is easy to read - navigation is quite simple. From a design perspective, you are using default IE colours for links which IMHO I just don't like, but that is purely a personal opinion so please don't take it as critisism. Other than that great start!

Would like to know more about usability etc - can you pass on any knowledge?

I've seen a lot of people use a 1x1 invisible gif with alt text of "Skip Nav" or whatever. Not sure about all the implications, but if it is in an external CSS file, the engines aren't smart enough to know what that means yet in the slightest.

Brian.

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ToolBarn.com, an Internet Retailer Top 500 and Inc. 500 Company | Tool Parts | Pet Supplies

Hi Pagetta

the reason for having default values in the text field is so that visually impared people know exactly what information is needed in that field...

http://www.jimthatcher.com/webcourse8.htm

I did see it in the WAI accessibility guidelines somewhere too....

There are two different validations one for the markup and one for accessibility... the markup one is easy to validate but the accessibility one needs a lot of human input and manual checking....

Here are the WAI (Web Accessibilily Initiative) guidelines

http://www.w3.org/WAI/

And thanks for that again to Brian....its rendering invisable now so I might just leave it and see what happens...

Cheers
Warren

__________________
Warren
http://www.premtech.com.au
Premtech Web Design
Affordable Web Design Without Compromising Quality

Hi folks I have totally redesigned the site - yet again....feedback would be welcome...

I tried to edit my original post to put the new address up there but the edit buttons wasn't there....


here is where the new site is now.

http://www.premtech.com.au

Cheers

__________________
Warren
http://www.premtech.com.au
Premtech Web Design
Affordable Web Design Without Compromising Quality